Anne Slacik

Anne Slacik | Painter anneslacik.com

Born in 1959. Lives and works in Saint-Denis. [...] Slacik's canvases convey a sense of something fluid and - at the same time - compact. While fluidity by definition refers to limpidity and harmony, "compactness" represents that which is dense, repels emptiness and forms a block. And you've already come across Mallarmé's decisive spectre, that "calm block here below shushed by an obscure disaster". The fluidity of this painting is the essence poured onto the canvas - as water once was. Water or gasoline travels through the pigments, transforming them, working them, the slow erosion of geological processes; it is the drips (vertical) and brushstrokes (horizontal) that can be observed; it is the very history of each canvas, the layers of time that make it up, the lakes and puddles of powder that eventually dry up, the wave and foam that reveal its movement. [...] The space of the canvas is wide open. Beyond the traces, we perceive movement. It's even the motif - the canvas in the making, lying on the ground, waiting for that which will transcend it: earth + water = something primordial, which happens, that is undoubtedly the event. In other words, Slacik's painting is eventful. [...]

Bernard Chambaz
"Un flux qu'on voudrait perpétuel", excerpt, Viviane S. catalog, 2016.