Maïlys Seydoux
The world and the illusion of the world

Mailys Seydoux’s work is eminently intimate; it was born in the cocoon of the studio-world where the demiurgical artist takes shelter. There she launches into an uncompromising introspection that leads her on to paths of light and shadows where she can be, in turns, hidden, protected, or exposed…
For a long time, this quest was made manifest in the self-portraits she painted in numbers – some straightforward, others more allusive. But she also conjured up a playful, poetic presence that allowed her to impose her own distinctive style.  
The artist makes the rules of the game and pulls all the strings (Kimaniki, HT, 2019).
Therefore, in order to better capture the world, she puts it on a stage and creates a scenography of veils and mirrors that intercede between the onlooker and the unknown that lies far, far away, beyond the light.
In the brilliant apparatus the painter set up, images are deconstructed; our perception is reversed, upset, disrupted. And we end up striking a singular balance, as if levitating. Like shadow dancers or magicians, we travel alongside Maïlys to the edge of reflections and reality, in a realm as transparent as a breath of wind. She unsettles our senses and lets us see that there is not one single reality – no single truth. She opens the door to every possible world and interrogates the very essence of things by manipulating light. Her light, casual touch brings softness to this slightly topsy-turvy world, made somehow joyful by her increasingly bold choice of colors.
 Picasso famously wondered “Who sees the human face correctly: the Photographer, the mirror, or the Painter?” The same question could be asked of Mailys Seydoux’s work: who is able to best see the world and the light?

 

« A person is a shadow… where we can never enter » (a)
Shadows – soft, quiet, mysterious – are like a recurring refrain throughout Seydoux’s body of work. As she looks for the painter, the woman within, she creates shadowy figures in the hope, perhaps, that they may one day shed proper light onto her in all her complexity and reveal how much of her is woman and how much is painter. Direct shadows, drop shadows or shadows created by a the screen of veil are everywhere; they need to be considered beyond the stale clichés of psychoanalysis and viewed as a wink and a smile from the artist who invites us to figure out where she is – whether or not that is actually knowable… This is what her paintings themselves are trying to figure out, with our active participation. For the gaze of the onlooker will always take part in the construction of the self. Such is the premise, yet it is posited in such a playful fashion that we are never burdened with any existential anxiety – Seydoux only suggests that we undertake such an intimate questioning, recalling what we already know: that the artist’s work vibrates at  the innermost core of the onlooker. Maïlys Seydoux tackles this fundamental principle of art with playful elegance and lets us see parts of herself in such paintings as “Rencontre” (“Meeting”) or “Retrouvailles” (“Reunion”) where the symbolism of the artist’s figure is incarnate in faceless self-portraits that make it universal.

“I broke my face in the mirror” (b)
It is not that the face never appears… mirrors and fragments of mirrors offer a reflection of the face, which they reveal in a subtle play of appearances and disappearances.   
“What is the mirror?”, Jean-Marie Le Clézio asks in Material Extasy (1967). “It is but a glass panel coated in tin, which gives a loyal reflection. But loyal to whom? To oneself? To no one but oneself. The reflection has never been a certainty.” Like an illusionist, the artist juggles many images of herself, constantly reworking a figure she is never satisfied with: the truth is slippery and constantly conceals itself; it escapes even the most sensitive of inquisitions…  The more recent paintings seem to have veered away from this quest: has MaÏlys finally found herself? Does she no longer need to paint herself in order to exist?

 

“The truth is on earth like a broken mirror whose every fragment reflects the entire sky”(c)
From the vantage point of her studio/shelter, Maïlys is now venturing into the garden – into an imaginary garden whose light she captures with her astute apparatus of mirrors disseminated in the protective, oh-so familiar space. She does not need to walk the world, for the entire world is there and she captures fragments of its unfathomable mystery by restituting vibrations, made even more vivid  by her increasingly warm and vibrant color palette. Moments of dizziness and bewilderment follow. Moments of great gentleness too, as in the recent series of “Danaës”, where wild, seemingly ungrounded perspectives showcase a dazzling, light-drenched background. Reality falters into abstract seduction. “The prettiest thing I have ever seen, once, in the countryside, in a mirror hooked to a window, was a fragment of the sky and of the landscape, with a well-selected cluster of fraternal trees.” (Marcel Proust in a letter to Marie Nordlinger): you need to get lost in order to better find yourself – such is the sensitive, curious, poetic creed of Maïlys Seydoux, whose work bears Proustian echoes.

Lionelle Courbet
Translation Élise Trogrlic

  1. Marcel Proust, in Du côté de Guermantes, 1920-1921

  2. Louis Aragon in Le roman inachevé, 1956

  3. Christian Bobin in Réssuciter

 

Maïlys of the Acacias
or
  A Painter’s Identity

If you want to know who she is, ask her the question and she will show you what she calls her ID papers.
They are, you’ll see, genuinely sumptuous – a golden rule of sorts that grants her a permanent residence permit in the realm of artists.
Upside-down gardens, oblique skies, urban landscapes whose inhabited windows are tinted with a touch of yellow after darkness settles. Papers with palpitating surfaces reveal the heightened sensitivity of her musical brush. From the gaze to the brush – her music is on the inside. With her refined choice of colors she shares her emotions, down to the way the objects she has chosen are assembled in space – an artist’s soul vibrating for us. A signature. A confirmation.



Sometimes she is present in those scenes from a studio. Truthfully. Unapologetically. As she is.

 

Haïm Kern
Translation Élise Trogrlic