The Blade Painter

Do you fancy mangoes? You know, that exotic fruit which you slice in squares before turning its skin inwards so as to make appear a grooved chessboard of appetizing cubes… Mangoes, their deep golden hue, their enticing flavor, are to be enjoyed plain as a dessert, mixed in a green salad, or as a taste enhancer spicing up roasts and poultry. Delicate to the palate, the fruit is still firm when ripe yet melts on your tongue. It is subtly fragrant, lending a joyful and fresh touch to all plates, without ever being overwhelming. From the deeps of Asia, where its pulp, no doubt, has taken on the golden shades of Burmese pagodas, it has travelled to Africa and the Middle East, where it has taken a foothold before thriving in the Americas. On our European plates, this delicacy embodies today the riches of fusion cuisine, this gastronomic achievement which owes as much to the opening up of the world as it does to the spirit of bold experiments striving for cross-cultural synthesis. 

In China for which I left Paris, ever laden with remembrances from all continents, ever charmed by multiple esthetic trends, my mind flirts time and again with reminiscences of mangoes as I gaze at works from my friend and cousin Fabian Edelstam. A Swede with some distant Swiss roots having settled in Paris, a Scandinavian attracted to Latin warmth, a traveler who likes to come back to homey surrounds, the artist is inherently dual. But of a form of duality that is tame. He has long harnessed that duality’s intrinsic energy and put it to good use in his artistic drive, calmly unfolding at the cross-roads of painting and photography. In renewing in the best of manners the ways of portrait painting – that form of art made obsolete by the advent of photography – Fabian Edelstam rejuvenates darkening ancestral portrait halls. In so doing, he does not roam with a camera in hand, trying his luck at a novel snapshot or an original take. Instead, he uses photographic works created by others; he loots forgotten trunks where old prints fade away.  He revives the deeper layers of tarnished frames withholding family palimpsests. As he takes them out of oblivion, he regenerates them through electronic processes, he bathes them in a new fountain of youth and dabs them with light correcting touches. Then he magnifies them by several multiples, before cutting the large pane in a flurry of equal little rectangles. He then glues these new infants born to a mosaic enamored with a puzzle, as it were, on a Belgian linen canvas, primed in a tonality and swaying brush strokes calibrated to fit the subject. A reassembled portrait thus appears, perfectly recognizable and yet subtly altered: nothing akin to a portrait of Fabian Grey or Dorian Edelstam, no. What is then unveiled is much rather a fusion painting matching the exactness of camera works and the sharpness of the blade with the immemorial traditions of portrait making and the warmth of oil paintings. You may note in it a form of giant pixellisation, a shade of binomial sequencing. A prevalence of monochromatic hues bears testimony to the inheritance of black and white photography. A density of lines is reminiscent of the reverence to lineage. And over the whole, always, a set of irreverent squares dangle out of their assigned spots, making fun of the established order of the whole  as if they were instilling some mad genetic mutations. 

Fabian’s style may cross over to other forms than those of mansion halls peopled with forbearers. At times, a bank note will take the uncanny form of a sort of dazibao. A painting by an old master may come to a new segmented life. A totemic political figure, a jetsetter or a movie star will come offstage as a mosaic before entering a museum. Strikingly, all works are born out of a repetitive treatment and a similar mode of action. But that semblance of monotony is misleading. It disguises an underlying narrative, speaking of rigor and vigor in the act of perpetuation and the quest for meaning. What is this image that already cracks and fades away? asks the artist. What has the blade cut into? Your fleeting memories or your unavowed reverence to a cast golden ox? 

Some may jest at the iteration of such similar artworks. Others are disturbed if not mildly shocked and can’t refrain from criticizing the daring of the artist: How could he thus slice our queen? How dare he deface our idol? What took him to dismember such a sacred image? Have you noticed how cold this colour is? What a strange hue! Oh the ghastly artificial fire behind such a respected icon! In the best of houses, paneled walls resonate from time to time to a staccato of muffled reproaches. Yet the wider number is prompt to reject such old fashioned conservatism. A vast majority is attracted to the works, even enthralled by their appeal, even though they may not decode them at once. Thus it is that across different countries, cultures and continents, Fabian Edelstam has made himself known by a growing crowd of aficionados, hungering for more of his works, tinged with positive emotions, at ease with the cutting edge technique as much as with the inspiration steeped in a familiar past. Fabian’s art is liked, his portraits speak to the audience, and the full picture is reassuring as it seems easily understood. Question marks arise at a later stage. An emotional coming-of-age ensues before the misleading evidence as we deepen our understanding of our own link to the subject-matter. This translates into a transition: as we grasp what is deconstructed of the portrait, a mental construct supersedes the obvious and we come to glimpse at what will become of all things transient.

All the while, from his tranquil magic garden on the shores of the river Seine, Fabian Edelstam prunes on his mango tree. Will the pruning be erratic or even? It all has to do with the artist’s quest for enduring harmony in his own Garden of Eden.

Dr. Jean-Jacques de Dardel
Ambassador of Switzerland