The Diplomat
On Wednesday 11th October the exhibition Fascination, by the Haitian artist Philippe Dodard, was inaugurated in Marbella, at El Rastro. An exhibition organised by Ana Tess Bejart, interior designer and writer, in collaboration with the artist Julián Martín and the Embassy of Haiti.
The evening was attended by the Haitian ambassador, Guy Lamothe, collectors, designers, architects, culture and art enthusiasts from all over Spain. The artist Philippe Dodard welcomed the guests with an original live painting performance that involved all the attendees. Live music evocative of Haitian rhythms and a cocktail party rounded off the evening.
Philippe Dodard has in his DNA intense and powerful colours, enigmatic shapes, mysterious symbols, magic, enchantment and fascination. The artist began in a studio environment: Poto-Mitan, created by Jean-Claude Garoute and Patrick Vilaire. From then on, the line was present in his work, whether painted, drawn or sculpted. In the second half of the 1970s, Philippe Dodard was confronted by his contemporaries, his growing number of gallery owners, the incipient and somewhat confused critics who had no points of reference, his family and the general public.
Michèle Montas, a journalist who had just returned to the country, taking note of the state of art in the country, commented on the existence of a certain type of “lazy and profitable” serial painting. This remark could be applied to the work of Philippe Dodard, who became a successful painter. Fortunately, he soon realised that a successful career could also mean artistic failure. It was a “moment of rupture”, the beginning of an era in which the Haitian artist would increasingly devote himself to different disciplines, to the point of abandoning the plastic arts to become a poet.
Philippe Dodard’s work often contains references to Cubism and, beyond that, to African statuary. He rarely ventures into abstraction, preferring figurative images. While it is true that his images represent, the figure or figures that occupy the space are not real, but stylised. In this way, they always retain their reality.
The Haitian ambassador pointed out that “in Philippe’s paintings, we cannot remain indifferent to this cohabitation of two forces: lines and colours, which the artist finds a way to master in order to create a worthwhile work of art. In fact, the work holds together despite this ‘conflict, which, however, forces us to abandon the representation of volumes and the anatomical precision of the figures, which are intermingled with each other and with different forms, all on the same plane. More information on the opening of the exhibition can be found here.
