Marc Séguin

BYDealers Auction House Biography and Notes

Ombre à la rosace, and its counterpoint La coloration du vide, were both produced as part of the Rosaces series (2000) by artist and writer Marc Séguin. The latter painting features a grey-toned portrait of the artist standing against a black background. One arm is extended, the other is bent, and the hand points at the figure's temple as a mass of red and blue matter spurts from it. Small white dots are visible in the distance: the checkered glow of a rose window, much like the one tattooed on the artist's chest. Ombre à la rosace reinterprets this theme: a ghost-like, glowing-eyed figure, arm bent and pointing at its head, stands before a large rose window that illuminates the dark interior with red, blue, and white light. The figure's lower half extends, tone on tone, into the pure black background; the impasto adds a second narrative layer to the work. Provocative and transcendent, the painting brings together the sacred and the profane. As France Gascon writes, "Symbols from the history of art and painting are prevalent in Séguin's work. The rose window is a powerful example of this . It's interesting to note that the line between sophisticated art forms and other, less refined styles is also very thin: rose windows rendered in quick brushstrokes, squirts, and drips; the Middle Ages and Abstract Expressionism come together, curiously summoned for the same purpose in an ever-surprising partnership."