Hi-fi

[High-fidelity]

2025
Oil on linen
24 x 24 in

Hi-fi [Haute-fidélité]

Second painting in the ongoing series Fractals under Surrealist Constraints, Hi-Fi [High Fidelity] speaks of the bonds that hold us despite ourselves, of memories that resurface, just as vivid, when looking at an old photograph or while listening to a song from the 1980s we thought had been forgotten.

These are our feelings, our attachments, our roots… An old hit we keep in mind, without realizing it, throughout the day. The same record spinning in a loop, an old 45 rpm that derails and never stops. It is the fidelity of our affections: time, that assassin, would like to erase our memory, yet does not always succeed.

It is also the lock of hair, an imprint of our history and our DNA, that one attempts here to tear from us, without success. Beings and unconscious bonds prevent us from leaving and draw us back to a bygone era, endlessly playing the same refrain.

Can the young man in the painting continue to grow and emancipate himself? Or is he already part of the past? Perhaps he is nothing more than a remanence, a fragment of memory belonging to the woman who bursts out of the frame. The reminiscence of her youth, which she desperately tries to preserve.

Nostalgia, nostalgia!