PATRICK ALTES
A SENSE OF PLACE
27th November - 12th December 2021
Electro Studios Project Space
St Leonards on Sea
Responding to the title, A Sense of Place, this mixed group show explores themes of family, heritage, migration, displacement, identity, nostalgia, memory and loss through paintings, drawings, sculpture, installation and mixed media.
My work has been deeply informed by my personal history. I was born in Algeria from a Franco/Spanish family. I lived for extensive periods in South Africa, South America and I am now based in the UK.
I am known for my contribution as a 'pied noir' artist to the emerging Franco/Algerian art movement, with a body of work - paintings, digital artworks - that strongly critiqued colonial discourses that excused French dominance. As a young adult, I lived in South Africa for two years under the apartheid. I was teaching at the University of Fort Hare, a key institution in higher education for black Africans, which counted among its former students a number of prominent leading opponents of the apartheid regime among them Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Oliver Tambo.
This was my firsthand experience of a society based on discrimination, repression and deprivation of civil and political rights for a large part of the population. It deeply marked me and fuelled in me a sense for the politically, socially and humanly acceptable and my work seeks to make an innovative contribution to the artistic debate around the question of identity and representations. I have long questioned prevailing notions of place, nostalgia and memory as fundamental elements of identity formation in my work.
Patrick's work confronts negative cultural stereotypes and advocates for tolerance and respect in times of angst, division and separatism. With perilous journeys depositing migrants on European - and now, British - shores, Altes turns his attention to the harrowing circumstances that increasingly accompany migration and resettlement.
Read more about the A Sense of Place here
EXHIBITION ARTWORKS
ARCADIA SERIES 2021
Arcadia often refers to a place of rustic innocence and simple, quiet pleasure. It evokes the idea of an idyllic pastoral dream where life is both happy and wholesome.
This idea often implies that the past, another past, is a better alternative to the present. It is often associated with nostalgia and the idea that our distant past is a model to which we should aspire. As such, it never encompasses the brutal events, colonisation, war, discrimination, social inequality, racism, xenophobia, patriarchal values and so on, that were part of the creation of our idyllic past.
Memory has an amazing ability to blur, transform, erase what we don’t want to know or remember while illuminating the savoury part of our past. This series refers to this forgetful embellishing process that we love so much as it allows us to never question ourselves and have a rose-tinted vision of our past. The works appear to conform to this process of artful beautification, but the vintage quality of these snapshots is undermined by a diffuse feeling that there is much more that meets the eye in these paintings, a notion that fills us with unease and interrogation.
In that respect, Arcadia is intrinsically linked to our colonial past and our ongoing refusal to see its consequences lingering in our contemporary societies.
Arcadia often refers to a place of rustic innocence and simple, quiet pleasure. It evokes the idea of an idyllic pastoral dream where life is both happy and wholesome.
This idea often implies that the past, another past, is a better alternative to the present. It is often associated with nostalgia and the idea that our distant past is a model to which we should aspire. As such, it never encompasses the brutal events, colonisation, war, discrimination, social inequality, racism, xenophobia, patriarchal values and so on, that were part of the creation of our idyllic past.
Memory has an amazing ability to blur, transform, erase what we don’t want to know or remember while illuminating the savoury part of our past. This series refers to this forgetful embellishing process that we love so much as it allows us to never question ourselves and have a rose-tinted vision of our past. The works appear to conform to this process of artful beautification, but the vintage quality of these snapshots is undermined by a diffuse feeling that there is much more that meets the eye in these paintings, a notion that fills us with unease and interrogation.
In that respect, Arcadia is intrinsically linked to our colonial past and our ongoing refusal to see its consequences lingering in our contemporary societies.
FRAYED IDEOLOGIES SERIES
In a world of constant, rapid and brutal transformation, our identity can cling to a sense of belonging to a specific ‘mother’ or ‘father’ land. This series refers to the delicate balancing act that we can experience when living in a culture different from the one we originate, the sense of uneasiness and the feelings of drift and ‘otherness’ it can elicit. The restlessness that can occur as a consequence can be construed as a disadvantage or enjoyed for its liberating aspects. The works reference a variety of Western and Eastern influences: Aboriginals’ myths of origins, Villeglé’s torn posters, Japanese action paintings, lyrical abstraction… It also includes asemic writings and gives pre-eminence to signs, marks and drawings.
ARCH OF PALMYRA III
The Roman Empire is referred to as a European empire stretching across both sides of the Mediterranean - Roman ruins in North Africa are evidence of its “lost”, or momentarily forgotten European past.
The Arch of Palmyra has come to represent tolerance and inclusion, as well as resilience in the face of loss. Yet it is an interesting paradox that the replica now stands in New York, while the original lies in the dust of the desert.
The painting reflects on the juxtaposition of cultures and how ‘the culture clash’ and ‘the melting pot’, offer far more potential for a tolerant and inclusive society.
In a world of constant, rapid and brutal transformation, our identity can cling to a sense of belonging to a specific ‘mother’ or ‘father’ land. This series refers to the delicate balancing act that we can experience when living in a culture different from the one we originate, the sense of uneasiness and the feelings of drift and ‘otherness’ it can elicit. The restlessness that can occur as a consequence can be construed as a disadvantage or enjoyed for its liberating aspects. The works reference a variety of Western and Eastern influences: Aboriginals’ myths of origins, Villeglé’s torn posters, Japanese action paintings, lyrical abstraction… It also includes asemic writings and gives pre-eminence to signs, marks and drawings.
ARCH OF PALMYRA III
The Roman Empire is referred to as a European empire stretching across both sides of the Mediterranean - Roman ruins in North Africa are evidence of its “lost”, or momentarily forgotten European past.
The Arch of Palmyra has come to represent tolerance and inclusion, as well as resilience in the face of loss. Yet it is an interesting paradox that the replica now stands in New York, while the original lies in the dust of the desert.
The painting reflects on the juxtaposition of cultures and how ‘the culture clash’ and ‘the melting pot’, offer far more potential for a tolerant and inclusive society.
MIGRATIONS SERIES
This series tells a story of diaspora, alienation, rootlessness and growing political awareness of the need for diversity and multiculturalism in a world that threatening to slide into fragmented, competitive, and nationalistic chauvinism. It also is a personal story of a formative travel through very diverse cultures to become a “citizen of the world” and find a form of inner peace.
Throughout history, from nomadic deserts to modern cities and for thousands of years, people have migrated from place to place looking to improve their lives for the better. Whether we live in America, Asia or Africa, we are all descendants of immigrants in one way or another. Patrick Altes, through his art, has chosen to examine the complex issues of identity and diaspora that have touched all of our lives in one way or another regardless of artificial boundaries.
Herair Garboushian. Garboushian Gallery, Los Angeles.
IDYLLIA RISING mixed media & collage on canvas
Warring countries, antagonised communities fraying at the seams like so many torn and weather battered shreds of papers that juxtapose but never merge.
It may be that one's identity takes its roots in one's, real or imaginary, unique or multiple, cultural or primal, connection to the soil, the place, the land.
These never merging, for ever juxtaposing, shreds of papers find their junctions, their specific arrangement and form non-random, synchronistic shapes, patterns, movements and tensions, which the artist echoes in his work.
In a world in constant, often rapid and brutal transformation, our identity remains defined by our attachment and sense of belonging to a specific land. This work swings between poles and extremes. Here it emphasises the sharp contrast between the uniting influence of the auroral land and the conflict and divisions-torn countries that's constitute it.
Conflict torn and threatened by constant upheaval, the land still sits under the silver and dust-chequered sky. The reprieve is temporary, night brought peace under the stars, day will reignite an age-old conflict that colonialist greed started. The world has become polarised, and antagonistic, pitting cultures, religions, political systems and people against each other.
This series tells a story of diaspora, alienation, rootlessness and growing political awareness of the need for diversity and multiculturalism in a world that threatening to slide into fragmented, competitive, and nationalistic chauvinism. It also is a personal story of a formative travel through very diverse cultures to become a “citizen of the world” and find a form of inner peace.
Throughout history, from nomadic deserts to modern cities and for thousands of years, people have migrated from place to place looking to improve their lives for the better. Whether we live in America, Asia or Africa, we are all descendants of immigrants in one way or another. Patrick Altes, through his art, has chosen to examine the complex issues of identity and diaspora that have touched all of our lives in one way or another regardless of artificial boundaries.
Herair Garboushian. Garboushian Gallery, Los Angeles.
IDYLLIA RISING mixed media & collage on canvas
Warring countries, antagonised communities fraying at the seams like so many torn and weather battered shreds of papers that juxtapose but never merge.
It may be that one's identity takes its roots in one's, real or imaginary, unique or multiple, cultural or primal, connection to the soil, the place, the land.
These never merging, for ever juxtaposing, shreds of papers find their junctions, their specific arrangement and form non-random, synchronistic shapes, patterns, movements and tensions, which the artist echoes in his work.
In a world in constant, often rapid and brutal transformation, our identity remains defined by our attachment and sense of belonging to a specific land. This work swings between poles and extremes. Here it emphasises the sharp contrast between the uniting influence of the auroral land and the conflict and divisions-torn countries that's constitute it.
Conflict torn and threatened by constant upheaval, the land still sits under the silver and dust-chequered sky. The reprieve is temporary, night brought peace under the stars, day will reignite an age-old conflict that colonialist greed started. The world has become polarised, and antagonistic, pitting cultures, religions, political systems and people against each other.
PATRICK ALTES : THE CROSSING
INSTALLATION (2021)
A white boat, alluding to universal myths of passage, also of death, symbolically sails across the Mediterranean, carrying with it a ball of red roots. A large rusty metal trunk from which huge roots emerge is the next step of the journey. On top of it an oriental looking empty birdcage adds to the nostalgic atmosphere of transience and loss.
On the side, a tree is standing uprooted upside down with its roots, painted a velvety, tactile red, at eye level. A couple of old, battered suitcases, one of them open, full of ash, still holding a family photo and a small pot with a seedling, rest obliquely against the tree trunk, alluding to both the loss of forced displacement and the fragile possibility and fragile nature of a new beginning.
The Mediterranean shores are nexus of civilisations that have traditionally cross-fertilised and influenced each other. Colonial empires are now gone but their toxic legacy remains and influences the way “the Other’ is perceived. Migrants are now the unwanted invaders.
Born in North Africa, I moved to France as a kid but the umbilical cord that links me to my continent of birth was never severed. As such and somewhat paradoxically, I am part of an African diaspora that struggles to find its place in Europe.
A SENSE OF PLACE : EXHIBITION IMAGES
Read more about the artist here