The Winemaker, portrait of Chrystelle R.
huile sur toile , 100×100 cm Prix2000€ + envoi
Louis Dumont, in his ‘Essays on Individualism,’ shows how the modern Western individual results from a historical process initiated by the renunciation of the world of the early Christians, the founding ‘freedom’ of the individual asserting itself in the rejection of worldly life. Through the centuries and the creation of the ‘universal’ Church and its rejection by the Reformation, the individual becomes increasingly involved in the world until, with Calvin, having nothing else, in predestination and the uncertainty of grace, but this world to impose the Kingdom of God through his will and action. This process inevitably leads to the artificialization of the world since nature, natural law, and any other instance beyond the human tend to disappear in favor of the information project and subsequently the mechanization of reality (cf the transhumanist project). The paradox is that the individual, in the name of his health and happiness, finds himself subjected to the machine, gradually stripped of his freedom and therefore on the verge of disappearance. These were my readings as I painted the portrait of this young woman, of those who today resist the sirens of nature domination to listen to it.