About Jacques Rousseaux

« Already as a child, radio scans were a source of true fascination.

Long before I would work with them in a medical capacity, the greyscale nuance, the play of light, and their secret dimensions held a certain attraction for me.

I would understand later that this emotion issued from a certain Perfection.

The same Perfection to be found in all structures of the Living, and which reminds us that Human kind is but a part of a unified Whole.

Furthermore, the radiographic image has this capacity to graphically convey conflicts that play out in invisible realms. It isn’t then unexpected that the richness of this medium rather quickly overwhelmed me »

Jacques Rousseaux , July 2017

Jacques Rousseaux was born in Reims, in 1985.

During his adolescence, he would experience altered states of consciousness that would align him with the mystical and encourage him to call into question the prevailing definitions of the real.

This enquiry constitutes his primary source of inspiration.

Despite a sustained artistic practice, he would pursue studies in medicine in deference to a long held family tradition.

While developing his interest in the human body, his studies left him in need of expression and creativity. Upon gaining his Doctorate in Dental Surgery he immediately enrolled at the Penninghen School of Graphic Arts, graduating in 2015. A visual artist, he nonetheless remains a medical practitioner, based in Paris.

RADIOGRAPHY is his first personal exhibition.

Inspired by research into alternative medicine,

RADIOGRAPHY evokes the inherent disharmony of the human nature.

The radiographic prints carry the marks of that confrontation between body, soul and spirit, the origin of all pathology.

Simple stains, these forms come to life in the mind of the spectator alone; they have no physical reality. They « exist » in that cloudy dimension called consciousness, beyond the reaches of time and space.

Using a personal technique combining automatic conception and pareidolia, the artist transcends forms and textures to reveal their profound messages in a series of 15 works upon which to speculate, all certainty aside, if perhaps here a face, or rather a presence, there an expression, a mood, a character. Silently we witness the dialogue between flesh and spirit enveloped in this living light, that we may perceive as emitting from some higher source and within which there subsists the hope of rest and harmony.

In RADIOGRAPHY, Jacques Rousseaux adopts the role of a messenger, accessing those most palpable contents of the human nature, as well as its most secret.

“ I have the feeling that these prints express themselves through me rather than the contrary and I find it difficult to assume exclusive responsibility for the existence of these “beings”.

Their presence sometimes unsettles me inasmuch as their means of apparition escape my rational will. ”