Laurente DELAMARRE
53 years old, was born in Valence, France.
Work et live in Paris.
Birth. Union with material-light.
Fecund maternal womb. He silently assembles the fibers that will make Laurente Delamarre's fabric of light. The stomach is dark. Anteroom of what will one day shine. Everything is a consideration in this directed and yet intuitive approach. In his embryonic state, this budding artist barely sees the glimmers of the world. They call on his eye to capture them, to make them dance, to finally orchestrate them. Glowing red at this time, they do not yet obtain what they suspect from this future master of light.
Pain in the room. Eye twitching. Opening of the diaphragm. Prodigious burst of photons. Whiteness floods, predominant, which dazzles the conscience and invests the eyes. Everything was said without words, in this single long cry. At breakneck speed, Laurente appears, like a rebirth. In his hand, he holds his universal baggage from beyond time. The light fairy chose it. A wedding took place. At all costs, it will have to be honored.
Open&Close sex, 100 x 81 cm, Gouache painting on paper, 2004.
Adolescence. A crest for trajectory
Movement on the rock. Not chased. Graceful synchronization. One leg stretches to reach a new point of support. Above all, don't tremble. Look up and to the sides. Light everywhere, even between the crevices. The mountain devours its men. She only tolerates the brave and the instinctive. Those who give him everything. She is a mantis who only reveals herself to her greatest lovers. And only tolerates their touches.
Laurente doesn't know it yet: mountaineering will be a reflection of her artistic life. At the top of the ridge, he perceives this possible shift. In perilous balance, a precipice threatens from both sides of its existence.
50 x 50 cm, Self Portrait, PARIS, 2021.
Twenty years. Revelatio lucis
Strait of Gibraltar. Maieutic light which makes man rise from his bed and sends him on a mission in silence. Without an audible word, like the Archangel to Mary.
Facing the star, against all uses, sculpt more than reveal the colors: You will do.
Like a giving birth to oneself, everything will be form, silhouette and shadow. On this sea where solitude rules, each of the elements hopes that the photographer will take it as a model, and offer it its chromatic immortality.
But Laurente is only looking for the light source. The sun will be the ferryman because it is the only desire. Through the star she reveals herself to him. From now on, she will be his medium.
65 x 92 cm, oil on canevas, 2001.
Thirty years. Light Brush
Lost love. There is a need for rescue or risk of disappearance. A woman passed by. Get back to the root of yourself, quickly. Painting. He only sees that. The immersion begins. It continues at all costs.
Then he presents this vital elaboration. The gallerist: “You’re missing the point. »
Laurente needs tension to reveal herself. As in photography, where everything leads to its opposite, he likes combat. An elective friendship depends on it. In love without saying it. A life then. He struggles to search, so he finds it backwards. He is worshiped and cursed. He discovers it through the hollow, in deductive circles. Then he touches on the major tool: light brush. Where the form matters less than the medium. He returns a few months later. The words change. By stealth, he enters the world of art.
Portrait, Photo Credit Yaël Shemtov, 2024.
Forty years. The off-beat tool
As between these pharaonic dynasties where supposedly nothing happens, here is a fruitful decade. These are the rays of light that continue to infuse in silence. It is not intellectual any more than reflective. It is not painting any more than drawing. There is apparently only inconsistency. And yet...
It is a panopticon tool. Slow. At the wrong time. A mechanism that has become foreign to its time. Yet it is there, in the present. Not to oppose. Not even to score. But to accomplish Laurente’s words at all costs. Without any shame, in a so-called outdated time. It’s a Rollei-Flex device.
Self-portrait, Photography, 40 x 40 cm, 2021.
Fifty years. We only talk about ourselves, and therefore about each other.
Imperfect, the time of others has run its course. We must now explore ourselves in the present. Make a mark on yourself. Organic, finger coated against the freshly printed image. Glittery varnish, discreetly colored. This feather is the interface between light-source and flesh model. Little by little, Laurente becomes her own tool. He will be the one through whom the light distills its celestial words. It goes back to childhood. Basically the rays say almost nothing. On the other hand, they talk to him. Cross his gaze. Ricochet on his skin. Return to the Rollei. The lucky ones hit the hyposensitive surface. These are the chosen ones here, here, before our eyes.
Laurente has become a pen, a trace, a varnish. He is this other, on the Sea of Gibraltar. He takes this place, formerly occupied by the life companion. He begins this serious dialogue with the master light. He restores everything. Do not keep anything for its use. He is only passing through. We don't capitalize on that. We only take what we can carry.
He reports his being. So ours. And to put it bluntly, he exposes himself.
Paris, Photography 50 x 50 cm, 2023.
Today. Anthropomorphic light
Laurente addresses her guru, the light:
“Come on, I’ll paint you.” Instinctively or calculatedly. I will reveal your anthropomorphy of you, your deity in short. I will restore, wherever I perceive you, the human artifact that you reveal even better than me. In these scenes of the gods of the racing circuit, you will draw my faces. In this floral burst, your neuronal portrait which is mine. In these reflections of the city, my symbolic figures. I will go so far as to tear away the veil that tries to differentiate us. I will strive to bear witness to the dazzling with which you inundate me. »
The light responds:
“Don’t get me wrong. Like the mantis, I will devour you. I'm organizing a real-time drama for us. What I sculpt for you, I borrow from the material of your mind. To achieve the salt of your soul, I prune more than I add. You'll have to retrain if you want to survive it. Because above all, I am the vector of your consciousness. The revealer of your flashes. Which burn away as you use them. Renew yourself, this must remain your mantra".
Waking Dream, 50 x 50 cm, Paris, 2024.
Tomorrow
Laurente dreams of going even higher. Already flying a few meters above the ground, to expose in depth this unknown which is the self. Painting light means always getting closer to it and breaking away from it at the same time. By survival, by necessity, with the imperative of avoiding the abyss. This wax that could melt…
All that remains is the salt of oneself, indisputable. Laurente paints by these new imposed lights. Resilient, he already draws the beauty of LEDs, which like sharp brushes allow him to better carve out his anthropomorphies.
He expands his universe with these close and frightening heroes. He is the daring painter dipping his brush directly into the pot of falsely indolent light.
Who, of course, will not forgive him anything.
Andréa Valienne