Rashmee Pal Chouteau reveals in her works the invisible, not because they cannot be seen, but because it is difficult to truly recognize them without taking the time, which the pace of contemporary society rarely allows us to do . With her ability to shift her gaze into an interpretation that is unique and personal, that is specific to artists who offer us a different vision of the world, she leads us into her own world.
The artist plays with the ambiguities of representation at different levels to create her own plastic cosmogony, her own poetry. She maintains a turbid,unsettling universe through the use of scientific codifications or a suave formal vocabulary and a play of analogy between the human body and the vegetal world.
At first glance, Rashmee's work engages us in a observation and a poetic restitution of the real with a play of framing that focuses the gaze on the represented object. This object or rather this vegetal subject is presented as if through the prism of the magnifying glass of a microscope, the botanist's tool of choice, and under the eye of precise scientific observation. But doubts arise,the details come to the surface, gradually becoming legible to the attentive observer, that it is not a question of accurate science - despite the quality of the details observable in the paintings. On the contrary, the artist moves the viewer - the voyeur - towards the sensuality emanating from the flowers and fruits represented:the density of the colours, blisters, pearls of condensation or floral fleece...
A second aspect of the work hybridises body and vegetation from a symbolic back and forth dialogue between the human and non-human world. It starts with the analogy of breath, with the rib cage invaded by plants producing oxygen through photosynthesis. It is the waste product of this process for the plant - oxygen - that allows us to live, The artist thus shows the game of necessity and connection necessary to re-read our relationship to the world; lets us also see in the painting this nourishing symbiosis between a network of blood vessels and the roots of a tree where blood and sap feed indistinguishably...
This work of sensitive collision is also carried out between the artist's immediate vegetal environment and memorable images from the cinema or the history of Western art. Thus, in one series, we find the nude body of Botticelli's Venus hidden by a gigantic peony - a symbol of modesty - and in the background we can see an oil rig symbolising a proud and productive economy... An intriguing encounter between the artisanal Renaissance and contemporary industry, where this figure of a woman reigns quietly.
These representations resist the immediacy of the reading of the contemporary world, which is undoubtedly why the artist takes her time to paint or draw them and has taken advantage of the period of confinement due to the pandemic to look even more closely at certain elements of her immediate environment. It is in this context that Rashmee Pal Chouteau started this accordion sketchbook where one walks as in a garden, discovering as one goes along the different species of trees, plants and animals... the details and atmosphere that caught her attention and her desire to retain the spirit of the place and the moment on paper. A reading like a foraging, a promenade of simple emotions in front of the beauty of the living.
Ronan Lé Regent
