Léa Toutain

Starting from her feelings, Léa Toutain works from the presences that surround her.

The notion of occupation-absorption is a theme in her approach to otherness. She wonders how we can use our time and what are the relevant activities of our daily lives, which have the most meaning in our changing societies.

 

After reading Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, reflexive occupations such as walking, tidying up, dozing off, taking care of, building or craftsmanship come back as a subject. To dwell on the differences and similarities between work and occupation, effort and pleasure. Then, making a concrete, manipulable object.

 

The characters mingle through inaccuracies, traces and gestures in seen or invented landscapes and interiors. The spaces are dotted with human belongings or plant elements observed during hikes or manual activities. An idea of the community, in which characters alone and accompanied at the same time transmitting some techniques of know-how.

Their faces are partially erased, fleeting, without frontal gaze. She operates a distancing, between gaze of observation and soft voyeurism.

 

However, paintings are instinctive, navigate between the finished and the unfinished and condense different layers of intimacy both in the materials used and in the final image. The body of the medium : colors and the oily or egg-like matter shape an organic image.