Individualité à part, inclassable dans l’histoire des avant-gardes, Pat Andrea ne se soucie pas des questions de rupture, d’historicité, de progrès : laissant cela aux commentateurs de l’art, ce qu’il aime lui, c’est peindre.Depuis les années 1960, Pat Andrea continue d’explorer les possibles d’une peinture vraie et personnelle. C’est dans la vie intime en effet que l’artiste puise ses sujets : sa « guerre des sexes », ses amours, ses déchirures. Mais, à travers un réalisme subjectif qui filtre, qui déforme, qui se distancie et joue souvent, par l’humour, la carte de la dérision. Un réalisme qui dépasse l’anecdote ou l’illustration naïve pour révéler poésie et beauté dans la trivialité. Mêlant petite et grande histoire, mémoires autobiographiques et résurgences de mythes ou d’événements politiques, Pat Andrea ouvre l’intime à l’archétypal. Ses images touchent et ne s’oublient pas parce qu’elles ont affaire avec un fonds ancien, commun à tous. Entre désir, peur et violence, elles s’ouvrent sous nos yeux comme un petit théâtre des comportements humains, dans ce qu’il a de séduisant, intriguant, ridicule. Cette réalité triviale, Pat Andrea la met en forme de façon singulière dans une peinture hybride qui joue des contradictions et assimile différentes formes de réalisme. Tout comme la vie de l’artiste s’est construite sur le voyage, de la Hollande à Paris ou Buenos Aires, son œuvre va librement de territoires en territoires, des maîtres anciens à la modernité, de la peinture hollandaise à l’art international. Cohabite dans ses images en effet, l’empreinte d’une culture plurielle : le métier des maîtres du Quattrocento et leur sens classique de l’espace, la composition calme et silencieuse des petits intérieurs hollandais mais aussi le déséquilibre, le bruit, le mouvement et la démesure baroques, la géométrie décorative de Mondrian ou les couleurs vives et acides du Pop Art. De cette hybridation, née une œuvre double qui se donne à la fois comme réaliste et irréelle, naviguant entre pulsionnel et réfléchi. Dans ces intrigues aux sens multiples et indéterminés, on retrouve aussi les thèmes de prédilection de l’artiste, présents depuis les débuts, déclinés et réinventés par un imaginaire foisonnant. Leslieux dépeints par Pat Andrea, là intérieurs, ici paysages, se répètent en effet de façon récurrente : déjeuner sur l’herbe, ballades en forêt ou en mer, espace clos de la chambre à coucher ou du salon. Ils sont les espaces tranquilles de la vie quotidienne que l’artiste métamorphose et fait basculer vers une frontière ambivalente, à la limite du réel et du fantasme, de l’ordre calme et de la tragédie cruelle. Dans ces décors, les figures évoluent tels des archétypes : la femme, l’homme, l’enfant, le chien. Ils nous invitent à regarder, à travers les déclinaisons du couple et de ses troubles, les beautés et les drames des comportements humains : des Vierges hurlantes, des Pin-up à l’enfant, des sourires cannibales, des tignasses médusantes, des pisseuses médusées, des seins à couteaux tirés, des « trouples » galipette, des culs à la gâchette, des nus à explosion, des dépecés sur l’herbe, des « Cènes » anthropophages, des étreintes et des luttes, des envols et des chutes. Au bordel de Pat Andrea, Eros toujours s’en va en guerre, armé de dérision, de cruauté, de tendresse. Et les images qui défilent sous nos yeux sont des fictions à l’intérieur d’une pièce où se reflète, tel un cycle perpétuel, le recommencement de la vie humaine : de la naissance au grand désastre, all over again…
Individuality set apart, in the history of avant gardes, Pat Andrea is not preoccupied by questions of disruption, historicity and progress, leaving that to the art writers and commentators, what he aspires to, is to paint. Since the 1960s, Pat Andrea has continued to explore the possibilities of genuine and personal painting. It is in fact in his intimate life that the artist seeks his inspiration: his “war of the sexes”, his loves and his tears. But through a subjective realism that filters, deforms and distanciates itself and often plays with humor, the derision card. A realism that surpasses the anecdote or the naive illustration to reveal poetry and beauty in triviality. Combining small and great history, autobiographical memoirs and resurgence of myths or political events, Pat Andrea opens the intimate to the archetypal. His images touch the viewer and are remembered as they deal with a history that is common to all. Between desire, fear and violence, they open to our eyes like a small theater of human behaviors, in their most seducing, intriguing and ridiculous ways. Pat Andrea puts this trivial reality in a singular way, in a hybrid painting that plays with contradictions and absorbs different forms of realism. Just as the artist's life was built on travel, from Holland to Paris or Buenos Aires, his work freely navigates from territory to territory, from the old masters to modernity, from Dutch painting to international art. His images are imprinted with coexisting plural cultures: the craft of the masters of the Quattrocento and their classical sense of space, the calm and silent composition of small Dutch interiors, but also the imbalance, noise, movement and excess of the Baroque period, the decorative geometry of Mondrian or the vivid and acid colors of Pop Art. From this hybridization, a double work is born which is both realistic and unreal, navigating between the impulsive and the reflective. In these stories with multiple and undetermined meanings, we also find the artist's favorite themes, which have been present since the beginning, declined and reinvented with his abundant imagination. The places depicted by Pat Andrea, interiors there, landscapes here, endlessly repeat themselves: lunch on the grass, ballads in forest or in sea, the confined space of the bedroom or the living room. These are the quiet spaces of daily life, that the artist metamorphoses and transforms into an ambivalent threshold, at the limit of reality and fantasy, of calm order and cruel tragedy. In these settings, the figures evolve in the manner of archetypes: the woman, the man, the child, the dog. They invite us to look, through the various expressions of a couple and its troubles, the beauty and the drama of human behaviors: Howling Virgins, Pin-ups with children, cannibal smiles, astonishing Medusa hairdos, meditated pissers, breasts with knives drawn, "trouples" somersaulting, triggered asses, explosive nudes, butchered bodies on the grass, anthropophagous "Last Suppers", embraces and battles, flights and crashes. In Pat Andrea's brothel, Eros as always goes to war, armed with derision, cruelty, and tenderness. And the images that parade before our eyes are fictions reflected inside a room, where life endlessly begins all over again, from birth to the great disaster, in a perpetual cycle. But through a subjective realism that filters, deforms and distanciates itself and often plays with humor, the derision card.A realism that surpasses the anecdote or the naive illustration to reveal poetry and beauty in triviality. Combining small and great history, autobiographical memoirs and resurgence of myths or political events, Pat Andrea opens the intimate to the archetypal.
Individuality set apart, in the history of avant gardes, Pat Andrea is not preoccupied by questions of disruption, historicity and progress, leaving that to the art writers and commentators, what he aspires to, is to paint. Since the 1960s, Pat Andrea has continued to explore the possibilities of genuine and personal painting. It is in fact in his intimate life that the artist seeks his inspiration: his “war of the sexes”, his loves and his tears. But through a subjective realism that filters, deforms and distanciates itself and often plays with humor, the derision card. A realism that surpasses the anecdote or the naive illustration to reveal poetry and beauty in triviality. Combining small and great history, autobiographical memoirs and resurgence of myths or political events, Pat Andrea opens the intimate to the archetypal. His images touch the viewer and are remembered as they deal with a history that is common to all. Between desire, fear and violence, they open to our eyes like a small theater of human behaviors, in their most seducing, intriguing and ridiculous ways. Pat Andrea puts this trivial reality in a singular way, in a hybrid painting that plays with contradictions and absorbs different forms of realism. Just as the artist's life was built on travel, from Holland to Paris or Buenos Aires, his work freely navigates from territory to territory, from the old masters to modernity, from Dutch painting to international art. His images are imprinted with coexisting plural cultures: the craft of the masters of the Quattrocento and their classical sense of space, the calm and silent composition of small Dutch interiors, but also the imbalance, noise, movement and excess of the Baroque period, the decorative geometry of Mondrian or the vivid and acid colors of Pop Art. From this hybridization, a double work is born which is both realistic and unreal, navigating between the impulsive and the reflective. In these stories with multiple and undetermined meanings, we also find the artist's favorite themes, which have been present since the beginning, declined and reinvented with his abundant imagination. The places depicted by Pat Andrea, interiors there, landscapes here, endlessly repeat themselves: lunch on the grass, ballads in forest or in sea, the confined space of the bedroom or the living room. These are the quiet spaces of daily life, that the artist metamorphoses and transforms into an ambivalent threshold, at the limit of reality and fantasy, of calm order and cruel tragedy. In these settings, the figures evolve in the manner of archetypes: the woman, the man, the child, the dog. They invite us to look, through the various expressions of a couple and its troubles, the beauty and the drama of human behaviors: Howling Virgins, Pin-ups with children, cannibal smiles, astonishing Medusa hairdos, meditated pissers, breasts with knives drawn, "trouples" somersaulting, triggered asses, explosive nudes, butchered bodies on the grass, anthropophagous "Last Suppers", embraces and battles, flights and crashes. In Pat Andrea's brothel, Eros as always goes to war, armed with derision, cruelty, and tenderness. And the images that parade before our eyes are fictions reflected inside a room, where life endlessly begins all over again, from birth to the great disaster, in a perpetual cycle. But through a subjective realism that filters, deforms and distanciates itself and often plays with humor, the derision card.A realism that surpasses the anecdote or the naive illustration to reveal poetry and beauty in triviality. Combining small and great history, autobiographical memoirs and resurgence of myths or political events, Pat Andrea opens the intimate to the archetypal.