In high places and in darkness, deities meet: “And flamines, crib figures, Brahmins, magi, guèbres/Cried out: Jupiter! Allah! Vishnu! Mithra!” wrote Victor Hugo in Magnitudo Parvi (trouver texte traduit). With Angélique Lecaille the drawing is indeed the place of a revelation, the appearance on the sheet of paper of a profound but inexpressible idea, a strong desire for relief, which shows itself through a vision on the surface of the paper which is blackened, striped, blurred, and reserved in a series of gestures with no programme. As such, the artist’s rocky visions can be recognized in the romantic landscape as advocated by Caspar David Friedrich, claiming, with regard to the painter, that he represents “what he sees in front of him, but also what he sees in himself”. As for the exterior motif, it is not nature traversed by the 19th century walker, but a reproduction of nature which moves connected citizens, a nature duplicated and possibly vanished.

Julie Portier