François JAUVION (1971)

At the first look, the work of François Jauvion seems joyful, colorful and… inoffensive, like the artist himself. The visitors approach, they laugh, they comment “oh flashy colors!” “and have you seen the crazy cows?” “Who is the depression of the Saint?”. And after, the titles of the works begin to ferment in their brains, it simmers, and it awakes not very pleasant thoughts: it is the boomerang effect, gentle… 

Behind the acidulous colors and humor, the themes of the society recall the good memory of the visitors, of the themes one would prefer to forget: climatic disruption, Romani people, mistreatment of animals, emigrant crisis, sordid news… If the esthetic of the triptychs and the drawings often recall a universe of comics or cartoons, it is to make the child that hides in every visitor emerge. A child sees the reality without filter and without prejudice, spontaneously, and its much more sensible than the injustice of adults.

Because F. Jauvion conceals a great tenderness for the excluded, the weak and the animals behind his sharp humor. On the other hand, he has no indulgence for the multinationals, the tyrants and the pedophile priests: does the artist have a tender heart deep down? Yes of course! His chickens locked in the gulag nod the beck like the little old man that confuses his spoon with the remote control: it is the world that is cruel, so much to speak with irony and tenderness. The reliquaries also constitute an offset panorama of the scourges of the 2000s, without hierarchy and in disorder: H1N1, bullfighting, storm and flood, unemployment… Reliquaries, ex-voto or ex gray-gray has each one to cope with their conscience. The artist, he presses directly where it hurts.  

Caustic humor and child’s eyes, bright colors but heavy subjects, religious aspects for sociological objects, the visitors still stunned by the neurological boomerang stagger. It gets lost quickly, the habit of thinking. Jauvion, the artist who puts you knockout without showing the fists! – Olympe Lemut