Artists

Sacha Cambier de Montravel

Press release

Sacha Cambier de Montravel first draws his aesthetic references from the great European masters who shaped the history of painting from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. By revisiting the traditional technique of oil on wood, he pastiches allegorical scenes and mythological paintings that both defined the classical artistic canon and illustrated the moral order of early modernity. Sacha both heightens and disrupts these images, in which the religious and capitalist stakes of our contemporary societies already converge. As a troublemaker, he turns them into the site of a fantasized resistance, implanting within them figures that resist imposed power. In his painting, Sacha embraces anachronism and irreverence. He brings Brueghel into dialogue with Greek tragedy, Bosch with queer theory, John Martin with collapsology. He draws parallels between imperial conquests and the establishment of mega-factories, between the decline of ancient cities and the marginalization of contemporary communities. If he brings together distant historical references within apocalyptic landscapes, it is not to blur the narrative, but to show that history is invariably replayed to the detriment of those who attempt to escape it. In this series dedicated to the Orphans of Thebes, he retraces the anti-chronological journey of the homosexual people. From the idea of an original curse born in the earliest days of ancient Greece, he paints the scenes of a history that ceaselessly repeats itself, interweaving temporalities and unsettling our points of reference. We are thus invited to contemplate the great moments of these cursed orphans, glimpsing them as they wander through history, from impossible revolutions to shattered hopes. They do not form a battalion. To do so, they would have had to enlist, to discipline themselves, to be ready to sacrifice themselves. They would also have had to advance as a group, to pledge allegiance. The devil's children, as we sometimes call them, are strangers to military subtleties. They lack seriousness, and are sometimes taken for draft-dodgers. And so, female soldiers are sent to track them down and flush them out; attempts are made to force them into uniform. But agile and clammy, they always manage to slip through the hands of the kapos. If one still had to distinguish them, the devil's children do not call one another comrades; they say "orphans," because they never obey the fathers who want to make men of them. And yet, during the Terrible Year, they take part in the revolution like everyone else, forming a troop of sorts. When no one else is left, they climb onto the barricades, undress, and taunt the bayonets raised toward the sky. They were even seen, before it fell, dancing in a circle around the column in Place Vendôme. Their violent laughter was already making it sway. But whenever the cannons thunder, they take fright and scatter like a flock of wild geese. The puppies of the Commune rise up according to complex and paradoxical modes of insurrection. In truth, the orphans have learned to distrust revolutions, for they know full well that they are a cursed people. If they have survived for thousands of years, their lineage defies every law of biology. Born of sacrilege and insult, they have since escaped the tedious mechanisms of sexual reproduction. Ancient bastards of a line that crossed Oedipus with Dionysus, their genealogy is fragmentary, and their memory made only of echoes. Most of the time, crushed by their own history, they doze, a demon seated upon their chest. And when the fever has smouldered long enough, they finally awaken like undead dogs. And so, when they race down the slopes of Montmartre, it is as though they were once again wandering the streets of Thebes. Children of tragedy, they passed through every revolution, and even fomented a few, without ever winning one. Yet they carry within them the burning mark of past battles. Stranger still, they remember the revolts still to come. From echo to echo, history seems doomed to repeat itself: Dionysian rides, the campaigns of the Sacred Band, castles of subversion, the riots of San Francisco, the avatars of Grindr. So many libertarian impulses that always turn into voluntary servitude. History has made the orphans cautious. Cynical, they wear puppy masks, feed on poppers, and bark to sound the death knell. Nihilistic, they loiter on ledges and indulge, a little, in masochism. In the heart of torpor, they sometimes become anarchists, tucking their tracksuit bottoms into their socks and holding black flags above the burning avenues. And so, when they set fire to the Tuileries disguised as pétroleuses, they know they will not bring down power, that they will not lift the curse. But they clear the ground, opening up new cruising paths that those who come after them will use as places of refuge. — Samy Lagrange