Trois Traces d'Oscar - Place Colonel Fabien - Un Rêve de Peintre (polyptych)
Vinylics on canvas - 920 cm x 127 cm
2006

The "A Painter's Dream" polyptych features the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and the British musician, composer and singer Kate Bush. It consists of four paintings-steps, which constitute a narrative progression within the setting of the Espace Niemeyer in Paris, that is the Exhibition Space of the French Communist Party’s headquarters located at Place Colonel Fabien in Paris. This building, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, is considered one of his major achievements.

This progression is based upon one of Stanley Kubrick's film "2001. A Space Odyssey" key symbols: the black Monolith (eg "The Stagate", a link between life and death and a Resurrection Portal), and the "Star Child" (astronaut David Bowman’s avatar who is caught in the movie by galaxies and a Time-Space continuum, and who then returns as a fœtus contemplating the earthly globe -its original birthplace-, and Mankind -its primal life form).
The purpose here is to facilitate an encounter between Kubrick and Niemeyer, orchestrating this meeting in the basement's corridors of the Espace Niemeyer’s exhibition space.
In this subterranean space are displayed original pieces of furniture designed by Niemeyer, including a large black coffee table showing exactly the proportions of Kubrick’s monolith. This table happens to reflect the wall’s light units and the spots that overlook it. The optical illusion that is created through this reflection strongly evokes the orbital Earth’s horizon and the illuminating sun above it. Our "Stargate" being thus materialized, the journey can begin with an aging Kubrick and a centenary Niemeyer, whose attention is drawn to a mysterious woman in ceremonial crimson, dripping in the hallways.

Alike astronaut David Bowman’s own voyage, starts then a sort of "Back to Origins" trip that transforms Oscar Niemeyer into a new "Star Child", through three paintings -three metamorphoses. In this initiatory regression, an intrigued and younger architect (actually, showing the age he wore when he designed the Brasilia Palaces), follows the mysterious woman, under Kubrick’s amused and watchful eye, the director himself back to his age when he shot "2001: a Space Odyssey" -an amused and mischievous Kubrick who presumably already augured the end of this "Back to Origins" journey… Next step shows Niemeyer as a boy again, who eventually catches that mysterious woman around a corner. He holds a kite in hand (symbol of childhood and of what has wings and can fly), the kite's role being to evoke Brasilia’s Pilot Plan designed by urbanist Lúcio Costa, Brasilia's co-creator with the architect).
We discover here that the mysterious scarlet silhouette takes the British musician Kate Bush’s features, as an ambassador of metamorphosis. Kate Bush authored "An Architect’s Dream", a superb composition about the mystery of artistic creation, released in her 2006 "Aerial" opus. A composition that was at the origin of the "A Painter’s Dream" series' conception.
The Magician (symbol for the Eternal Womanliness theme, so dear to the architect’s heart) with a sweeping gesture unveils the hidden space behind (identical to a theater curtain that rises and shows the last act of the play), revealing thus the light that the architect actually chased at the moment when he became a new born Star Child himself.
That is the light of the ideal which guided him throughout his life : A passion for creation and the pursuit of artistic excellence.