Journey to Utopia I

The stylised subjects, usually women, of Delphine Desane’s early paintings are portrayed with minimal details (but eyes full of expression) against brightly coloured monochromatic backgrounds, rendered in a Fauvist palette, which exalt their inner state of mind.

While living in New York, Desane was drawn to the minimalism of Donald Judd (1928–1994, American artist whose work sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it) and Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988, American artist and furniture designer) —an aesthetic that mirrored her pandemic-era experience of urban solitude and provided visual relief from the challenges of co-parenting and fast-paced rhythms of city life. For Desane, emotions needed to be conveyed simply, distinctly, and efficiently on canvas.

Journey to Utopia I (a continuation of the series that Desane made for her celebrated Vogue Italia cover commission, based on the same format and using the same colour palette) from 2020 is a good example of Desane’s work from that period. In connection with her debut solo exhibition, Dreams of a Dreamer at Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy, the following year, Camille Okhio (New York–based writer, curator, historian, and senior design writer at Elle Décor) characterised Desane’s art as follows in her introduction to the exhibition:

Researching, blending and fusing disparate cultures, periods and moments, Delphine Desane uses her practice as a vessel for self exploration. The brush is a vehicle for understanding. Her simple forms contain multitudes. They speak to a single moment, packed with emotion, memories, longing. A single line acts as a marker for realizations, loss, and labor. Desane’s portraits are direct, intentionally unembellished, quietly referencing the shapes and figures of known and unknown ancestors. […] Bold and clear, her portraits are purposefully impersonal, so as to not limit their message. […] Desane’s figures are not defined by their past, present or expected future, respectively, but encapsulate all that they could be, all that they are, all that they were, in one explosive moment. “No matter where you go, the first thing people see is your blackness,” says the artist, and so, that is often the only clue given to the viewer - a reclamation of agency.

Desane created Journey to Utopia I in connection with her 2020 residency at the POCOAPOCO in Oaxaca, Mexico. Ahead of the 2020 CFHILL, Stockholm exhibition Black Voices / Black Microcosm (which included Journey to Utopia I), Desane gave the following background to the creation of the composition in question (‘Delphine Desane. Interview’, April 8, 2020):

This portrait is my first canvas of this large size that I have made. For me it was quite ambitious because I haven’t ever done that. The weather in Oaxaca is really dry and it is hard to work with acrylic—I am not going to lie. Specifically working with gradients, that was a fun thing to do. I recently learned about the Afro-Mexican communities in Mexico. A large part of them—there are a million of them—are living in Oaxaca. But I didn’t get to go and see and meet them. But for the first time, now in 2020, they are being counted in the census of the country. It is quite big for them.I have a few friends that were in Oaxaca at that time, and I went to see and visit their community. They were all explaining their experience to me while I was there. I wanted to take this occasion to make them feel seen in my work. That is why in the painting, in comparison to my other paintings, the hair and the woman is a bit lighter because it looks more like what their hair looks like over there. Again, hair and women are a really big subject matter, as we all know. I am trying to represent somebody that is part of this Afro community: Having her standing and really be seen and you cannot escape her physical state. I relate to the fact that now they are being made visible in the country as a community. The gradient is some way for me to put them in a geographical context because it relates to Oaxaca’s intensely beautiful sunsets.

That the narrative related to the artist’s ‘blackness’ is of vital importance to her work was also highlighted in the 2020 interview above:

I think that it is important to change the narrative. If you have a voice that can be heard, it is important that as an artist you should try your best to highlight what you want society to see through your own eyes. Because we all have different experiences as different individuals. As a black versus a white woman in Paris, you are living in two different worlds. I need you to understand what it feels like to move in the world like I do. What I see and what I experience as a black woman is really different for me than a white person. I think that the artist can and should show that, their personal experience of the world, but just show it on a bigger scale so people can understand and see different things, and bring awareness to what some people might not think could happen to them, because they are privileged.

The strength of Desane’s artistic practice lies in its fearless openness to an inwards journey. Her work is a site of self-exploration—a space where the complexity of identity as well as its internal and external judgment are exposed for all to contemplate. She dares to expand her identity beyond simplistic labels and embrace its layers and constant state of flux by conveying a more personal message through her paintings. By confronting these themes in a visually lush, symbolically rich language, she not only poses existential questions for herself but also creates space for viewers to contemplate their own interior lives and perhaps the ways they are perceived by others.

Provenance

CFHILL, Stockholm, Black Voices / Black Microcosm, 8 April - 9 May 2020.

Bukowskis, Stockholm, Sale 658, Contemporary Art & Design, 23 October 2024, lot 428F.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above sale).

Miscellaneous

Maria Vogel, ‘On the Heels of a “Vogue” Cover, Painter Delphine Desane Talks About What It’s Like to Break Through From Stylist to Art Star’, online article in artnet.com, 20 October 2020, illustrated in colour.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation