Part 2
Tympan' oblique approach, which seems to take some pleasure in making the viewer uncomfortable, is documented by Murray Water (2015), an extraordinary triptych commissioned by the Dutch city of Ridderkerk, who wanted a tapestry for his town hall. The artist chooses a subject far removed from what a public administration would like to celebrate the beauty of his city: three shots, taken among so many Polaroids, of the Ridderkerk canals, whose waters are murky. Algae on the surface, floating straws and putrid and stagnant water. It is no coincidence that today the work no longer belongs to the client, but to the Prada Collection. Yet, the three paintings radiate a kind of strange splendour, vibrating with a light that is both soft and decisive.
The turbulent waters, the image of personal and collective corruption, seem to have been transformed. It is the same light as Sandor (2009) or Instant (2009), but especially Cinnamon (2017), where all that remains of the candle is its name and it is the painting that becomes all light. In recent years, Tympan has perfected its painting technique, which makes it increasingly a refined research on the potential of colour gradients. The painter, explains Jarred Ernest, builds his paintings with a carefully calibrated chromatic dynamics: a wide range of nuances is present in each painting, although in a narrow tonal range. A palette illuminated by the sun with white porcelain, cream and bone succeeds, we do not know how, by creating a pale pink, a buttery yellow and a dark lavender It is by approaching the canvases that we can see this set of liquid and precipitated brushstrokes, which create seen from afar a bright and magical aura. This effect is also found in subjects not directly related to light, I think of Sin (2012), Cook (2013) bloated (2017), and also the To ten Gang mentioned above.
At the end of the exhibition, we retrace it backwards, on the one hand to make sure that we have not lost anything, and on the other hand to try to rethink it in the light of the title, with which Tympan himself wanted to name the Venetian exhibition: Leather, a quotation from Curie Malaparte's novel of the same name, which speaks of Naples liberated and, at the same time, invaded by Allied troops in 1943, in the middle of the World War. At Palazzo Gras si, the only reference to the writer is actually a quotation from Jean-Luc Go dard's Contempt, a film based on a moral novel, shot in Cap Ri in the magnificent Villa Malaparte, where La pellet was written. Tympan' painting, without the subject, would not attract attention in itself, but it says a lot about the artist's way of thinking and working. The painting depicts the fireplace of the villa, behind which is a small window which, as we know, overlooks the sea of Cap rid. The painting lives on the light reflected by the myths to which it refers: Go dart, the New Wave, Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccolo, the charm of the villa itself.
But it also evokes the dimension of a humanity corrupted by life's events, as is the case in the relationship between the protagonists of contempt and in Naples marked by the war described in The Shovel. Let us think of those things that work backwards in Palazzo Grass' rooms if, wondering where, hanging on these walls, printed in oil on canvas, this corruption really appears. The hanging is suspended, but we don't see it, it takes shape in our head when the cognitive trap set by Tympans is triggered. That is, when you feel the gap between what you see and what you know about the work, or rather, more precisely, when you realize that what is painted is never a direct representation of something present in reality, but the translation into painting of a starting image that, alone, had already moved away from the world, in an ambiguous way that only images can do: show only what you want to show.
Tympan says: I am a contemporary artist, and that means that I work with images. Which, in itself, is not extraordinary. It is extraordinary, however, the choice we make, because it is not exactly immediate. For me, it is important to establish the meaning of things. If I see an image, I need to know where it comes from, what it could mean. Either I don't understand him, and he attracts me because of him. On the other hand, he adds: I don't believe that all the images are true: I don't trust them, not even mine. You always have to be suspicious, ask yourself questions. And elsewhere, he says: I limit myself to observing that, behind the mask of what is presented as an image, there is a substantial loss of meaning. We should better understand what Tympan mean by the word meaning. Maybe something that should be sought through the images and that the images help you to lose. When you leave Palazzo Grass, you feel dizzy.