L’homme à la botte, 2018
etching, 42 x 34 cm (plate 28 x 21 cm)
Edition of 3 x 8 + 3 a.p., numbered and signed on the back
Printed by Romain Crelier, l’atelier de gravure de Moutier, 2018
Photo documentation: Philippe Queloz, 2018
L’Homme à la botte is a line etching of a uniformed figure whose head has been replaced by a boot, drawn as a bare contour and printed in three colours: red, yellow and blue. The military coat, the belt, the boots assemble the silhouette of authority, while the empty outline withholds the face and the body that would fill it.
The title plays on the French expression for submission to power, and the image takes it literally: the man wears the boot as a head, the figure of obedience fused with the figure that commands it. The substitution is faintly comical, the work is less an image of the strongman than a revoking of him, the boot-man undone by the absurdity of his own posture.
The primary-colour triad echoes the monochrome logic of the exhibition, where each colour and material carries the series it is paired with.
Part of the solo exhibition Haut les mains! at EAC Centre d’art contemporain (Les Halles), Porrentruy, 2018.
ADRIANE MORARD 