Labode
“LABODE – Toile de vie ” LABODE was born in 1947 in La Roche sur Yon in the Vendée. After studying economic sciences – oenology and ampelography, he graduated from the Nantes – Saldus School of Fine Arts – Stuttgart – Karlsruhe. He travels the world for 6 years in search of himself. LABODE is a powerful expressionist combining the brushstroke of a constant Permeke with the exacerbated fantasies of an Egon Schiele and a real passion for Van Velde. The supports and techniques with which this painter expresses himself are varied: acrylic, oil, gouache, ink and collage on wood, paper or canvas. LABODE’s painting is a painting of the moment that is longed for and wanted. The eye is as sharp as the will and it is in this union that he creates his violent and vibrant paintings, without false pretenses… LABODE or the assumed art of the unambiguous vision of a provocative sexuality…Painting is man in front of his distress! LABODE, a singular artist whose eventful itinerary escapes the usual references of time and place. Article written by Mrs Véronique Dupuy, Journalist : “Bourlinguer lors de voyages, de vins, de vitraux… Africans are accustomed to saying of Westerners: “They see nothing, they only want to recognise!”. Thus, LABODE’s painting will not conquer those who only want to recognise. This great traveller, oenologist, inspired by the art of stained glass, invites us to poetically inhabit his canvases. Each one of them evokes a singular story. All of them display subtle influences, bursting with colour, translating into “arrangements” the image of a multiple thought at work. Scenes of life can be detected as if through a glass containing a “wine trembling like a flame”. Seizures, fulgurances, luxuriances trace the paths of an affirmed inner world. LABODE’s painting is an action that is a direct extension of his life. It makes colours sing in power, intertwining, entangling graphic tensions. Of course, LABODE’s painting, “you can’t recognise anything in it” and this is not the least of its qualities. For those who have a taste for inner journeys, it is enough to let oneself be bewitched, to embark in the manner of Blaise Cendrars in “his” Trans-Siberian Railway…”.