Jean Frémon has published numerous novels and books in France, including Le jardin botanique (P.O.L., 1998), Le singe mendiant (P.O.L., 1991), and L'île des morts (P.O.L., 1994). His work has been translated by Lydia Davis, Serge Gavronsky, Stacy Doris, Norma Cole, and Tom Mandel, among others. Associated with Galerie Lelong (Paris, New York, and Zurich), he has written essays and monographs on Robert Ryman, Sean Scully, and Tápies.




Painting

The air between things is not air. The leaves of the tree are not leaves of a tree. The light is not light but decayed color. The color is not color but diversely reflected light. Integrity replaces candor and distance proximity. We are no longer in the world but before it, and what we are before is not the world. Things are images. Not the images of things, but reflections of notions which mimic things' appearances or which, drawing back from them, shut them away so as to preserve an idea of their truth. When, finally going outside again or starting out through the window which isolates a portion in the manner of a frame, we examine the contours, it is then, so it seems to us, unexpected paradox, that we are still contemplating art rather than its model.