inner romance 2024-25

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After years of working exclusively in abstraction, in 2024 Victor began exploring a dreamlike world where a man and a tiger traverse vast, abstract landscapes. Reminder of our smallness and that we're part of an environment way bigger than us. In that melancholic contemplation, the characters seem in pursuit of connection and meaning. Those romantic visions appear in his head first. Mixing reminiscence of the past or projection of a future. In his process, Victor starts with a tiny sketch on a post-it or a notebook, with some notes about the different steps, colors and materials. The image is then projected on a canvas. This step involves quite thick layers of paints, spreading it with different brushes and tools to create textures, adding paper and letting it dry with the paint. Once dry, he sands the piece before building up multiple layers of paint, allowing refined details to emerge organically.

With this serie, the artist wants to talk about inner life, and through his personal experience tries to grasp the essence of the relationship we have with ourselves. Depicting intimate emotions and universal themes. Deeply touched by some episodes of ''Self romance'', he wanted to find a body and mind symbolic to portrait his own introspection. Setting a symbiotic relationship between a character and its conscience. Self-awareness, mindfulness, dealing with emotions and traumas, in his paintings, the artist explores his inner dialog. In this ever elusive ideal relationship with the self, he decided to represent the ''mind'', conscious or sub-conscious, with a tiger.

Those tigers appeared in his dreams for many years before coming onto his paintings, always as a peaceful figure. As an ally. In Jungian psychology, tigers symbolise strength and courage, embodying the psyche's instinctual aspects. It can also represent the unconscious forces that we may not be aware of, the shadows.

In chinese culture, it symbolises power and a great deal of nerve. it is considered to be an embodiment of “yang” – or positive – energy, the tiger is a solar animal associated with the sun, summer and fire. This fearless creature is also revered as a symbol protecting from disasters and evils.

This series explores the ever changing relationship between the self and the subconscious, represented by a lone figure and a tiger traversing vast, dreamlike landscapes. The tiger, initially a distant presence, gradually shifts from an observer to a companion—sometimes guiding, sometimes mirroring, sometimes challenging the figure. Through these paintings, Victor invites the viewer into a quiet dialogue on self-awareness, inner conflict, and the search for harmony within.