Experiencing the universal by Martine Méheut

Martine Méheut is a doctor in Philosophy. She is the author of “Penser le Temps" (Thinking about Time), published by Ellipses Marketing and “L'invention du Bonheur" (The Invention of Happiness) published by La Table Ronde. She is also an art connoisseur and collector. In the catalogue for Isabelle Bonzom’s exhibit “Corps à corps, terre à terre”, Martine Méheut reflects on the series of faces painted by the artist.

"The eyes of those faces are extremely present, without any notion of future or past. They are a timeless presence. Isabelle Bonzom has effaced anything concerned with anecdote, and temporality is, indeed, a form of anecdote. The faces series is about escaping out of time through fullness, rather than through stiffness. It is a living presence, it is full of life but life without time that flies, without anything ephemeral…

All I see in Isabelle Bonzom’s paintings seems to be lit up. It is perfectly luminous, crystal-clear as far as light is concerned and yet, she approaches obscurity, that is to say, mystery. Through light, she reaches mystery.

Isabelle doesn’t muse, she finds what is essential. In her work, I see a return to the inside, a return to intimacy. Intimacy in the sense that I, as an human being, have shed all my singularities and found the central core again. It is intimacy as universality.

I am not interested in what is different but in what we share. Why am I moved by Isabelle Bonzom’s work ? Because I feel something I live, something that is buried somewhere and that we, human beings, probably share, thanks to a dimension in which we can live, and that is what universality is.

Universality is actual experience that one cannot reach every day or at every moment because one is dragged away and absorbed. In fact, one is absent-minded. By contrast, universality is the opposite of absent-mindedness, and something of the same nature as experience.”

Martine Méheut, philosopher

First published in 1992 for the "Leaf to Leaf - Face to Face" exhibition