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I am tempted to conclude by saying that beauty is the harmony created by all the opposites at play, such as red and blue, white and black, life and death.

It is worth noting that abstract painters intensely questionned on one hand the use of materials, and on the other, a vision of the world. Last summer, in Skyros, I studied a fascinating object, a chair ripped open with the straw coming apart. I dedicated this work to my old friend Hans Hartung. His technique of playing with lines inspired me in the deciphering of this object.

It is as if every object had several meanings, contracdictory only in appearance, that true intelligence leads to reconcile. Thus, in the same search of all encompassing truth, I tried to give full speech to abstract forms, like in "La Figure tombée" (fallen figure) for instance. Or with the same preoccupation in mind, I looked very closely at a bucket of buds, asking it for a cry.

Every object and every being seems to me to cry out the profound meaning of the world, this very world we doubt and take so much for granted at the same time.

I refuse the dichotomy: Mind/Nature. Thoughts are real. I see nature as the sum of what is possible and what is human. The project of all thoughts is made manifest and reflected in all the states of life. We could say that abstraction is specialisation, a focalisation on one of the aspects of life. But if you carry it futher, it merges into the whole, hence enlightening it. As language merges into reality and fusions with it.

Jean Hélion