Understatement [litct]. nf (1521; low lat. Litotes, gr. word “Simplicity”) figure of rhetoric which consists in attenuating the expression of one's thought to make the most heard while saying the least.

Hyperbola [ip3rbcl]. nf (XIIIth; lat. Hyperbole, word gr. of huper, and ballein “to throw”) figure of speech which consists in highlighting an idea by means of an expression which exceeds it.

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Since 2008, the ensemble, “Litote & hyperbole” has been following the research undertaken during the CONSULATS, VIAKONSULAT & HORSKONSULAT projects. This project develops through my questioning as a contemporary artist of the pictorial practice, and more particularly, of the forms of the portrait.

Three issues emerged: the uniqueness and multiplication of images, the treatment of portraits referring to pictorial practice and the notion of randomness for its human dimension.

The history of the portrait, its ethnographic and historical collections, bearing witness to past times, naturally lends itself to evoking the theme of “suspended time”. The “litote & hyperbole” installation brings together works created on a parallel reflection, the notions of immutability, of stopped flow, of a meditative approach to time, a notion denied by continuity and succession.
 

With the video proposal, the portraits, in their linear evolution, point to the apparent paradox of suspended time. They recall the flawless and endless continuum even in fleetingness, the indefinite and homogeneous matter in which beings and things are caught. The suspension is in essence only a piece of time that replicates itself ad infinitum.