René Galassi

                                       Vital Flow : Between matter and mind


                        An energy was draw from his large canvases, mainly monolithic or triptychs ...
              An energy that only the dialectical contrast fluid  and  can  produce  between  matter and spirit ...
              A subtle energy that comes from the juxtaposition of simple materials, natural... the earth, clay ...
              and materiality complex and sophisticated in gold and silver ...

              An energy that emerges slowly but inexorably from the juxtaposition of basic colors ... tan,
              ... ultramarine blue layered with shades of black, white, gray-green ...

                                                                                                                  - Chiara Up - Excerpt

"Modern pictorial objects," wrote Merleau-Ponty, "bleed, spill out their substance underneath our eyes." In the case of René Galassi, the substance overwhelms the physical entity of the painting.
The pictorial material cracks, and the surface of the earth splits apart, in this universe where goldenochre rules supreme. These
earthly fissures dissolve into a black of surprisingly smooth curves at the bottom of the painting, where the material becomes
impalpable. Death seems to slip through the cracks of the earthly crust and brush against the nocturnal world. And yet, surging forth
from the base of this cracked, ruptured desert that sweeps the world over are strange ropes that, in their leave from the depths of the
painting, join together in a giant chandelier, in a sacred menorah whose stem touches the ground we -- we viewers! -- tread.
The painting becomes the privileged space for a permanent exchange, for a dynamic rapport between two colors, two densities, two
worlds. The rope organizes the space of the painting and connects it to its exterior by means of an unprecedented brush against the
floor. René's painting has no story to narrate. It exposes an original relationship between the tint area of the painting and exterior
space. The presence of a vertical figure braided in rope leads us to sensations at once infernal and celestial. The painting, to borrow
a phrase from Deleuze on F.

Bacon, snatches the figure from the figurative. It is in this new free order that we find a sacred dimension that, according to ancient
tradition, obliterates all representations of God. From hollow emptiness burst forth vines that graze the edge of our regards. The
painting recounts nothing more than its own rise skyward.

                                                                                                                                                                       - Nicole Deleu -