16 Oct 2009

Bili Bidjocka at Galerie Olivier Robert, Paris

The sensitive dimension.

Bili Bidjocka is a painter. Painting is his favourite area of expression. But painting is not a simple technique. It should not reflect as a painting hung on a wall or as a range of colours, but much more as a language of words, a form of writing, the rules of which being the initiation, meaning a decisive experience. Established knowledge, dear to existentialists, echoes the innate at the dawn of humanity: we are what we look for, quest preceding essence.

Throughout his career, Bidjocka has embarked upon the exploration of this infinite space, by using all the means available to him; video, installation, acrylic, canvas, oil, architecture, poetry, until reaching the point where this quest finally finds a meaning. A harmony, a logic. This quest has no other aim other than being a quest. In other words, knowledge. We are not dealing here in earthly knowledge or academic knowledge but with alchemy knowledge, something which precedes magic.

Tran substantiality is in the heart of this process which, as in the example of Christ who gave us another meaning to flesh and blood, tries to transform metal to gold – (but isn't this the unconfessed or assumed Grail of every artist?) to uncover the secret of things. In this game of mirrors, pretence and traps, in this infinite labyrinth representing art and life, Bidjocka tries to discover the secret formula which would allow us to abandon the concrete and material dimension and reach the dimension of pure sentient.

For that purpose, he decided to apply one of Boris Vian's rules: 'this story is true because I invented it throughout', to which he adds a pinch of the Borgesian style of writing. The result? Fictions that he has decided to embark us upon – from the Cape of Good Hope to Paris. These fictions appear in the shape of enigmas, equations – the meaning of which is to be revealed. Trying to solve them outside the sensitive dimension would be in vain because it is plain to see what the artist if revealing to us: we are in possession of all the answers in the world. It's up to us to know how to use them.

Simon N'Jami