Jean Marie Barotte’s work is dirven by an ecstatic and pitiless introspection which leads him to seek the deepest sense of human being.
The visula materials his paintings are made of are dark, sometimes even disturbing as they investigate the deepest instincts of the unconscious.
The word is often understood as an evocation of a writing soul, of an hidden message, an archaic calligraphy, drawn in the dust of the material and deposited on the canvas whose surface is conceived as an open space to cross with a line.
The Darkness though remain unbreakable as the mystery of human life. Like in Juan de la Cruz’s poem (Noche oscura) a candle is a faint light that may help us moving forward but slowly and still surrounded by obscurity; it cannot show us the way or dispel our dilemmas.
It is no coincidence that ash is one of his favorite material; it is the result of a slow combustion, a process of erosion, cancellation and transformation of one substance into another.
Jean Marie Barotte’s artistic expression is thus a matter of equilibrium, rhythm, chiaroscuro effects and the calculated harmonisation between presence and absence.