ALEXANDRE MASINO
For the last ten years I have been creating encaustic paintings where the richness, sensuality and versatility of the medium echoes the minimal and contemplative imagery. Encaustic, with its physicality, impasto and transparencies, allows me to create figurative works in which the gesture is just as important and meaningful as the depicted subject. I have always been compelled by the inevitable dualism between matter and meaning that we find at the core of painting. Consequently my work focuses on this infinite moment where these two realities oscillate. My approach is foremost pictorial and is deeply rooted in the constant metamorphosis inherent to the physical act of looking. A painting must offer many different realities according to the distance from which it is viewed and the ambient lighting hitting the surface. Many painters have evoked this very instant when the painting “rises”, when it “happens” and suddenly takes all its meaning. In my work this moment may only happen when one takes the time to look and place the subject in relation with the background, the light with the shadows, the image and the surface, and all these elements in relation with the complete picture. In this process, what is not represented may become just as important as what is actually depicted.