Recently :
march 16th to 21th, 2024, Les origines de la vie, Association Métamorphoses, Espace Michel Frérot, Thaon (Normandie, France)
november 15th (2024) to january 10th 2025, Réalité art actuel in Pré-Bocage Normand "Rétrospective 2014/2024", Micro-folie, Maison citoyenne et Médiathèque de Caumont-sur-Aure
Drop the masks
Drop the masksis a plastic installation comprising two paintings of 130x97 cm and a modular box created by a duo of artists. I will make this box in duo with the painter Patrick Thomé.
This series is inspired by a quote from the poet Jean Cocteau: "I am a lie that always tells the truth".
The paintings Persona 1 (Perseus and the head of Medusa) and Persona 2 (The young girl and death) question our relationship to theatre, speech and personality. Who are we really?
Preparatory sketch for The girl and death
“Man is less himself when he is sincere, give him a mask and he will tell the truth.”
Oscar Wilde,Interviews
Preparatory sketch for Perseus and Gorgon
Preparatory sketch for
The Ball of Masks
The Ball of Masks, inCabinet of Curiosity(ies) in duet with Patrick Thomé, 130x140x30cm, acrylic painting on frame (tribute to Jean Cocteau and the ballrooms), embroidered masks transformed into a wolf (fabric, cotton, painted wood, threads, staples) and mirrors and miscellaneous objects - such as an investigation - for the box of Patrick Thomé's cabinet of curiosities, facsimile of a magazine of the month and year of birth of the artist in the outer corners of the box, 2022
Box(es) with one or two paintings, 130x97 cm
see also the duets of Lydie Adrien and Richard Simon on Family Secrets, the duets of Mireille Riffaud and Paul Gros on the mask in abyme, and the duets of Sylvie Lelouard and Regis Bodrug on 19th-century literature and 20th-century cinema century.
These boxes are old school boxes for storing history and geography maps.
Lena h. Coms and Patrick Thomé is inspired by several quotes from Arthur Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde and Jean Cocteau to question truth, lies, identity and the mask.
The Ball of Masks is both a tribute to the world of Jean Cocteau, whose drawing and writing were one, to his marvelous imaginations (The beauty and the Beast, 1946) but also a tribute to Gothic novels, taken up in films (Funeral rites, Tim Burton, 2005) and cartoons (Anastasia, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, 1997) or amusement parks (The haunted house of the Disneyworld park). Thisball of masks, it is finally a tribute to the theater of objects.
“And after all, what is a lie? The truth under the mask...”
George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Pilgrimage of Knight Harold
“We must not look at things or people. We should only look in mirrors, because mirrors only show us masks.”
Oscar Wilde,Interviews
"You have to lie! You all have to lie, lie constantly and love to lie and believe that you are not lying. You have to lie to yourself. It's all there! Me, I don't lie to myself. Me "I have the frankness to confess to myself that I am lying, that I am a liar. You, you are cowards. You listened to me, you said to yourself! what a poor fellow! And you took advantage of my frankness to conceal your lies." I have you! Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, why I told you that I was lying, that I liked lying? It was not true. It was only to lure you into a trap and to to realize, to understand. I don't lie. I never lie. I hate lies and lies hate me. I only lied to tell you that I was lying. […] A liar! Me? Deep down I I don't know anymore. I'm confused. What a funny time. Am I a liar? I ask you? I'm more of a lie. A lie that always tells the truth."
Excerpt from the monologueThe liar written by Jean Cocteau for Jean Marais