Reinventing Nature

3 painters - Xu ying hui , Alexis Fraikin and Michel Alexis

Art Tree Museum, Beijin, China

November 2019 - January 2020
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The utopic flora of Alexis Fraikin​

Alexis Fraikin witnesses the exhaustion of our planet with fear. But he refuses to be a helpless bystander of what is happening today (pollution, overconsumption, overcrowding, destruction of the biodiversity, global warming…). Paying respect, in his own way, to the incomparable beauty of nature is his therapy to the anxiety caused by this terrible assessment. In order to heal the wounds of our environment, he invents tomorrow’s nature in his paintings: A diffracted nature, in which vegetal particles multiply to ultimately create a utopic flora.

The new set « reinventing nature », is full of Alexis’ imagination. His plants, lotus, sunflowers or poppies are both familiar and strange. Like in the best Science fiction stories, tomorrow’s world is not fundamentally, but only slightly, different from ours, which creates a small gap between reality and imagination, and thus a meaningful distortion.

Far from a figurative, but yet not in an abstract nor surrealist representation, Alexis’work is, in a certain way, linked to the symbolic school of the late nineteenth century. The French poet Charles Baudelaire taught us that « Nature is a temple in which living pillars / Sometimes give voice to confused words » and that « Man passes there through forests of symbols ». The painter helps us perceive and understand these symbols. Alexis’ very beautiful style sometimes refers to Gustav Klimt’s world, with whom he shares subtle tones and elegant shapes. The transparency of his inks and the soft geometry of his background also are a reminder of Klimt’s lovely fabrics and poetic sceneries.

Alexis is an committed painter, and as such, he intends to deliver a message. As a great lover of nature, he is afraid of the misbehaving of men, ready to shoot themselves in the foot. But he does it in a poetic and gentle way: He leads us to a higher awareness, without teaching a lesson. Instead, he shows us that, ultimately, the Goddess Mother is, and will continue to be, powerful, creative and exquisite. Like nature that inspires his work, Alexis’ painting is beautiful and good, both moral and aesthetic, following the old principle that Beauty goes with Good, according to the ancient Greek philosophy as well as the zen Buddhism.​

After a period of large abstract oil paintings, he goes back to drawings: colored washings and drawings on paper enable him to work quickly, anywhere, anytime, in his “itinerant studios”. Choosing intimate small-format and seeking perfection in details are consistent with his own spiritual quest, inspired by oriental meditation. He maintains from the previous oil paintings period, a strong taste for bright colors.

He loves litterature and works with philosophers and writers. In 2019, before his new adventure in China, he worked on the illustration of a new edition of La Fontaine Fables, from an ecological point of view, which is prefaced by the former French minister for ecology Nicolas Hulot.

With the set Recreating the nature, the drawing becomes softer, lighter and less sharp than in the Fables. It leaves more space for movements and colors. Even if some details surprise him, ask him to think, and thus disturb him a bit, the spectator will be compensated for by the overall harmony.

Corinne David,Exhibition curator, Art Tree Museum, Beijin China


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