Richard Zinon: Peut Être

In this series, created over the past year in the artist's new studio in Kerégal, Brittany, each piece seems to belong to the moment of its creation. Their power flows from the painter’s gesture to the markings on the canvas, to the viewer’s present gaze, to the movement they provoke—like a shockwave carrying, revealing, or erasing something forever. Each work closes and opens an infinite series of possibilities. It brings an end to the entire cycle of creation that was essential until that moment—assembly, preparation, colour, composition. Yet it begins the cycle of reactions—emotions, light, and exhibition.

All life bears within it both the void and the significance of its passage. These works seek to preserve its trace. They are the only tangible witnesses to these singular existences. Through them, the shaped, ordered, and composed material endures. Each one offers a glimpse of a being who perhaps grasped the essential—who, in a single moment, bridged the gap between the energy that wills and the energy that acts.

In the contrast of colours, the depth of planes, the instant of creation, the nuance of traces, the fading of tones, and the emergence of shadows, Zinon roots his existence in this “may be.” His work is an endless journey across this threshold, moving from doubt to certainty.

There is, in this “may be,” a part that belongs to the painter and a part that belongs to others. Zinon’s “may be” is an inner force, a raw emotion offered to the world. The “may be” of others is interpretive, emotional, spiritual. 

What “may be” emerges when “what is” resonated with the moment.

Text by Adeline Mace.