Jérôme Boutterin at Chez Jérôme / Paris

Jérôme Boutterin / Boutures, sans égards

September 11 – October 4, 2020

curated by Antoine Duchenet

Chez Jérôme

8 allée des Frères-Voisin

75015 Paris

In painting, preferring the end to the whole, from end to end, tenderly neglecting the area between the different tips. Marking the stroke out of the flow of patches and pitfalls, not stingy with goals, which litter the court with a game of paint, fair appetizer for the hand which banters but does not brush.

    A range of works selected at Jérôme’s, presented at Jérôme’s. In short, «Jérôme at Jérôme’s». On this specific point, the curated exhibition could be seen as an extravagance brought to what we usually appreciate in the form of an «open studio». Let’s just talk about this casual break, no longer than a weekend, on the «here and now» of the artist in his studio, evidently set up to display on the inside and from the inside, works in progress as well as others, recently completed. The open exchanges; the availability of the artist; the benefit of the work imbued with spontaneity in its place of emergence & the hangings even offered – why not – to a sort of feigned clumsiness, often leave their mark on people’s minds because all these parameters have nothing to be ashamed of, neither their temporary, improvised character, nor the warmth or hospitality that emanates from them.

    Here, I think that there are few elements that will deviate from this formula. Some, however, will be right in agreeing that this is not an open day but rather an exhibition. Yet what is a curator in an artist’s studio if not a convenient visitor, more or less curious, more or less sincere, more or less competent; another who is nothing more than a guest at the expense of an encounter, a moment and in view of a situation that is always particular in the time of creation; that of the visited. What I am trying to say is that there is probably no one else but the artist who inhabits the studio in such an exhaustive and established way. Jérôme Boutterin lives and works on the spot, and after each visit, I take with me the memory of a lateral look, very distinct from the one that Jérôme Boutterin takes on his paintings, on his environment and on the stages of work that make up and accompany his daily life. 

    «This is where the visit gets all its flavour» he would say, in this short conjunction, which then intends to astonish, over three days, the painter’s perspectives on his own work, while reinforcing his certain taste for detachment. It now remains to be seen what will result from the incursion of the visitor that I am into a story that is not mine, a sort of exacerbation from the point of view of any passer-by here, with the only advantage of a few cups of tea on the terrace without worrying about their order – in April or August – and the opportunity to have been able to look, on many occasions, under the carpet.

Antoine Duchenet

Translation by Mathilde Mazeau