John Fou’s characters do not belong to this world; they are otherworldly figures, and his paintings resemble prophetic narratives, recalling the mystical treatises of William Blake. He delights in exploring morphological freedom through scenes of monster persecution—these marginalized beings, rejected by society, that Claude-Claire Kappler describes as figures expelled with the energy of despair.
Imbued with a libertarian spirituality, the artist explores the mystical, mysterious, even esoteric dimensions of human existence. He undertakes a true teratological study of the soul, unfolding an imagined bestiary in scenes of hunts and battles that evoke the Gigantomachy or Dante’s Divine Comedy illustrated by Gustave Doré. A kind of dark poetry that questions man’s relations with the divine, while exposing the abuses of transcendent authority,
Saturne closely evokes Blake’s The Ancient of Days. In this work, a burning yellow and orange background reveals the dominant figure of Europe holding a large compass. John’s almost toxic color magmas exalt archaic forces, reminiscent of alchemical processes where human and non-human figures become emanations of the same primordial energy.
Through this aesthetic of the fall, John awakens ancient voices and buried archetypes. He offers a reflection on origin and end, chaos and order, the limits of human understanding. Although the theme of combat and judgment is central to this series, it seems just as inseparable from the notion of sacrifice as theorized by Mauss and Huber. Here, combat is not simply a physical or mythological confrontation, but an initiatory rite, a sacred struggle where each blow dealt, each alteration suffered, symbolizes an act of sacrifice. The forms become increasingly ghostly, the lines dissolve, the planes collapse. In this spectral composition, the creature—whether monstrous, animal, or human—is sacrificed and then subjected to a metamorphosis that transcends its initial condition. This sacrifice, far from being a mere annihilation, becomes a hysteresis, a process of evolution whose outcome remains unknown but releases the vital forces that inhabit the painting.
Neither space nor time seems to have any hold; these uncertain worlds offer infinite possibilities where past and present, fantasies, nightmares, and specters constantly transform. In sum, the Cave Canem exhibition is a collection of surreal fragments, floating stories that invite the viewer to reflect on the hidden forces that govern the visible, a summoning of powers that, according to Walter Benjamin, render the aura of art immortal, despite the passage of time.
- Barbara Lagié