Encré

“Our working together is over. It’s only with you that there’s been any trouble…” From the artist’s initial rupture with his French gallery owners to his first Manhattan exhibition, Color Box advances in strokes and touches, echoing the mixed techniques of Yaze, whose portrait it draws. The music adds to these different layers: the father-son duo (Sylvain and François Rabbath) who composed and perform it is mirrored by the exchange between the abstract painter and his father, who paints figurative landscapes. Exploring the solitude of the artist struggling for a studio and gallery, Color Box surrounds Yaze with a whole constellation, while in parallel preparations for his first exhibition in Manhattan take him off to Morocco to order gold and silver embroideries from village craftswomen. At the age of thirty-three, he is experiencing the doubts of a self-taught man, which even permeate the corners of his everyday life. But the year-long shooting and Rachid Djaïdani’s affectionate view of him help him to assert his art and way of being. The New York gallery’s work in progress, which inconveniently coincides with his own creative work, reminds Yaze of his solitude, in sequences at times tinged with comedy. The artist’s swings between asserting his artistic uniqueness and realising the precariousness of his position reflect an art market that is dysfunctional or at least buffeted between the fragile subjectivity of pricing and the associated commercial stakes. (Charlotte Garson)