Parisian artist Pol Taburet is only 28 years old but has the art world at his feet. His work invites us to consider complex and sometimes unnerving aspects of the world: silence, death and religion. His latest solo show in Madrid consists of works made for the art foundation Fundacion Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid. Here, Taburet speaks to Ryan White about his new body of work and the symbolism within it.
Pol Taburet’s “Oh, If I Only Could Listen” is on show at the historic Hexagons Pavilion in Madrid’s Casa de Campo park until April 20.
Pol Taburet named his new exhibition “Oh if I could only listen,” because these paintings leave us, the viewers, in earshot of a conversation but unable to discern what’s actually being said. Beautiful though they may be, the canvases are not designed to be welcoming. Instead, Taburet wants you on guard and wary of his stalking, faceless characters. So, if we could only listen, we might know what danger lies ahead.
The art world has quickly exalted Taburet, who’s 28. He has gallery representation from Mendes Wood DM; his work appears in the permanent collections of two museums, the Pinault Collection and Lafayette Anticipations. He’s been the subject of solo exhibitions in Shanghai, São Paulo, LA and at home in Paris. But, wary of hyperbole, he’s trying to avoid acknowledging the acclamations of a mercurial industry.
Here in Madrid, this latest solo show consists of works made for the art institution Fundacion Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid. “The space has this kind of church aesthetic,” Taburet says. So, “this silence of the church, the long corridors, the feeling of religious silence” shaped what the paintings became. It’s an appropriate fit, given these concepts come naturally to him. “Death will always be a permanent character inside my work,” he says.
Still, the paintings are darker than his earlier work. The luminous primary and acid colors—upon which he painted his black spectral characters—have deepened into blood reds, smokey grays and a particular shade of green that experts agreed was so unpleasant it would deter smokers from buying cigarettes. The odd flash of primary color does occasionally appear, though darkness is always the starting point, with every painting layered upon an acrylic black background.
For Taburet, the jump-off point is “the most complicated moment;” a large black canvas stood before him like the mouth of a deep tunnel or a portal into an unknown darkness. “There’s a dialogue that starts to happen with me and the painting. Once this dialogue is happening—if it’s happening—the painting grows by itself.”
Taburet says that the color is created through a mix of resin, fish-skin and alcohol. “This is how I get my color so matte and also bright at the same time.” Throughout “Oh if I could only listen,” his choice of color continually seems to evoke the feeling of a transitional moment of a day and, thus, a transitional moment in life. “Death is represented as a sun. The sunrise, the sunset... it’s getting darker and darker, the night is coming.”
Different consistencies of white punctuate the darkness. Sometimes, it’s a translucent, ghost-like figure, like that of “The ones that hide;” other times, it’s in solid blocks, like the different tables covered in a stiff, white cloth. In “Those who may not sing,” four faceless figures sit at an imposing large table. “I really wanted to give the sensation they’re ignoring you, and there is this emptiness in that painting; the tablecloth [represents] waiting for something,” he says. “It’s underlining the idea of being stuck in limbo,” as if you’re in a restaurant but “your meal is not coming.”
Like the masked characters of Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” who we view through the eyes of an uninitiated guest, these figures also signify a decadence. “It could be a banquet or a feast... for me, it feels like a weird gala, you know, there looks like [there are] some politicians or rich men at the table and they just look lost, and you don’t know if they’re waiting for some cannibal feast or something, or they’re just giving a sentence as a judge.” “Those who may not sing” is one of the first paintings Taburet did for the show, “so this kind of ceremonial sensation got reproduced in different paintings.”
To achieve the disorientating effect of his characters’ faces, Taburet often incorporates airbrushing into his canvas. The technique brings modernity to what is otherwise a traditional approach. This visual language also feels, unintentionally, Parisian, a city where old and new, tradition and modernity rub against one another, like a historic old gallery full of oil paintings next to a wall covered in graffiti.
With all the David Lynch tributes around at the moment, it’s hard not to notice some of his trademarks in Taburet’s work. The distorted, phantom faces of “Inland Empire,” perhaps, or the purgatory of the red room in “Twin Peaks.” This wasn’t something Taburet was thinking about specifically when making the show. But Lynch is an ongoing source of inspiration, as is Francis Bacon, with whom his work is regularly compared. The early work of On Kawara, the Japanese conceptual artist, was in his mind for this show. As was Goya and how he “dealt with the violence of the inquisition. [Léon] Spilliaert. Enzo Cucchi. Frank Bowling. Bill Traylor. These are my ongoing inspirations.”
In “Desire and stones,” a figure with a face somewhere between Wes Craven’s “Scream” and Munch’s “The Scream” stands on a white-clothed table and stares at the viewer, but also itself, a few feet behind. It’s emblematic of the show’s disorientating nature and who or what we should truly fear. The more time you spend with these paintings, the more you come to think that, if we could listen, we definitely would not like what we hear.