After Italy last summer where he paid tribute to his friend Léo Ferré on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his death, it is in Lille that Charles Szymkowicz is exhibiting until July 21. The painter from Gerpinnes Flaches, whose workshop extends the house hidden in a grove, is the guest of the Hospice Comtesse museum, in the heart of the old town: there he shares his devouring passion for the immortal figure of “the ‘cursed artist’, a notion popularized in the 19th century and the Romantic era.
More than 200 paintings are presented there, some painted at the beginning of the year and never shown, others monumental like his autobiographical composition The workshop with a length of 27.5 meters, a succession of 22 panels of 2.5 meters high, in the Sick Room. This is the first time that we can discover it in full.
The figure of the cursed artist
“In his expressive universe, the figure of the Accursed possesses all faces, all cultures, all eras”, writes the curator of the exhibition. She stands out as much in the guise of poets like Rimbaud, Verlaine or Baudelaire as through those of stars like Marilyn Monroe or Amy Winehouse… So many talents broken in their momentum, damaged and tragically cut down by life. Kafka, Primo Levi, Brecht, Pasolini, Beethoven, without forgetting Léo Ferré, his friend who wrote of him in 1989: “Charles takes you by the eyes and never lets you go.”
A gallery of portraits of people flayed alive awaits the visitor. Through them, Szymkowicz reveals himself and talks about himself – which he loves. “Contemporary art is me!” he asserts energetically. He shouts it to be heard. “Many people tell me that BPS22 is my place, the place where I should be. But I am banned!” Victim ?
In Charleroi, the artist is visible in the public space of the metro (Viaduc station), at Bois du Cazier, at the Marie Curie University Hospital. He exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts. “Figurative art is making a strong comeback everywhere. This is how artists who had been put in the closet have made their comeback, sometimes posthumously. I am thinking of Gilles Aillaud recently welcomed at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. Why not me at BPS22?”
A complete overview of his work
Charles Szymkowicz refuses to mourn it. “Because nothing can justify it”, he assures. He is eager to discuss it with Pierre Olivier Rollin, the director of the art museum of the province of Hainaut, on the campus site. As for the Szymkowicz exhibition project in Lille, it dates back more than two years.
“The last time I exhibited in France was at the Rimbaud museum in Charleville Mézières in 2003”reports the Gerpin painter. “When the director of the Hospice Comtesse museum came to meet me at the Boverie in Liège during my retrospective, I was immediately excited.” Things took time to build. Maudits offers a complete overview of his work.
Beyond the catalog prefaced by the mayor of Lille Martine Aubry and the outgoing president of the Walloon government Elio Di Rupo (with his portrait signed by the painter opposite!), the Hospice Comtesse museum has produced an inventory of the exhibition, accompanied by a detailed plan of the works.
The place is open all week, except Monday morning and Tuesday.
