Ô parfum rare des salants
Dans le poivre feu des gerçures
Quand j'allais, géométrisant,
Mon âme au creux de ta blessure
- Léo Ferré, La mémoire et la mer
Julien Livernois speaks of confidence. Self-taught, he is now as comfortable at the saw bench as with a camera in hand. Keeping an eye on the horizon allows welcoming all types of reactions to his art, may it be tears or resurfacing memories, like shadows fixed in time. And then there's the sea.
And the boats.
The idea unexpectedly arose from the pictures of landscapes: a stroll through the meadow where the fishermen ground their boats for the winter. And there again, the horizon, along the waterline - a new angle on an ever-present idea. La Mémoire et la Mer is a visual poem, brushed up against the dream world. Built around an insular heritage, it speaks of the wounds left on the hulls by high waters, briefly visible on dry land when the Islands life settles, before getting cleaned away. It also wakes up an urgency. From a new vantage point, Julien Livernois tells us: look again.
There's a reassuring sense of balance in the artist's atmospheric creations. We cling to this line that sometimes capsizes in a silent yet stunning rumble. Documenting the offshore accidents and repairs, Julien is a reporter & photographer of seaweeds, vegetation, maintenance rhythms, and nature's wear and tear. He offers each scene as a different universe, a world in itself.
And the boat.
There are the traces to decipher, and then there's the lived experience. The lineage can be felt in the indication of faux bas-reliefs, carvings and engravings in Livernois' body of work - heartfelt wink at what came out of his father's workshop. Textures and intentional close-up framings are seen in a new day once we remember that we're looking at boats. Interpretations are watered down, we're comforted with the sight of a known object. It brings art within everyone's reach.
