In front of the landscape | Komili

Komili’s paintings are snapshots of abandoned places, on the border between mineral and plant life. The artist locates these places and photographs them, before freezing them on his canvas. Often in the foreground is a derelict building, open to the whims of nature, and then the eye moves on to a distant landscape. Is it the vegetation that invades the site, or is it the habitat that blends in with nature? I like this duality between the physical and the natural, between concrete and ferns, between geometric lines and the rolling hills in the distance. My common thread is colour, the colour that the artist imposes on these unoccupied places: yellow and orange tones, brick red, ochre and white. By contrast, the vegetation is dressed in shades of blue and green, an invitation to contemplation. I think, and this is my case, that you can enjoy getting lost in Komili’s non-places, even if you like abstraction. Why do you think that is? I feel that the painting is “graphic”, highly constructed, sublimated by the artist’s colours, while at the same time the eye and the mind are free to lose themselves in the landscape: an alchemy of the tangible and the imaginary… (François Boutard)