Prudence Dudan

At the beginning, there is the page. Filled with words and images, it is never blank. Prudence Dudan marks it according to her mood: monotype, drawing, painting, collage... The choices are numerous, the gestures precise. They conceal as much as they reveal the original content, which says something other than what was disguised. Clouds pass in front of a Greek goddess, a dune covers a Spanish vase, grasses escape from a Thai fish trap.

Prudence Dudan collects beautiful vintage books on a variety of subjects, from boxed cooking to paintings by Courbet. Each provides her with a repertoire dense enough for mind and hand to warm up, finding in the repetition of motifs and the loosening of gestures the means for a kind of exercise—an active form of reading. The effort is minimal because pleasure prevails, and things come together by chance, like arranging a bouquet. Prudence Dudan improvises.

Working in series and in color, she teases the surface of borrowed materials with the playfulness of Baldessari and the joy of Matisse. Her free associations divert attention, and the subject of study, removed from its context, no longer informs in the same way. Only the whole provides meaning, which slips through her fingers, from the literal to the figurative.

Tired of being seen from familiar angles, plants, chairs, glaciers, forks, seashells undergo a metamorphosis. Ultimately, her parallel encyclopedia enters the realm of dreams.

Virginie Huet