Paintings for light fittings

 EN

Charlie Hamish Jeffery’s paintings are mystical materialistic objects. The use of wood or canvas shows the equality of mediums, products of the painter’s studio that could just as well be that of the set designer or carpenter. This relationship of production to the object made that immediately shows the traces of a work, would place it in a post-structuralism à l’oeuvre. The titles are there to thwart the obvious fact of the coloured surface. The dimensions produce a relationship that plays on our collective memory of the history of painting but also our corporeal habits. A Horizon of Fire, A Field of Nothing and The Hunt have the proportions of a door turned to the horizontal, and of a human body. The shift is made between the familiar, from furniture vocabulary (Charlie H. Jeffery sometimes makes armchair-paintings or table-paintings) and the obvious fact of a work. Because the vibration of the hues, sometimes acidic, decides the question of the motif, the line or the coloured background. The rapid and dazzling line often crosses out the surface like a fluorescent flash of lightning (Yellow Fluo Painting). The frame is replayed, even overplayed, as a motif in the picture.
The framing object becomes a highlighting subject. The vibrato produced by this action does not reveal a “beyond” of the painting but asserts its material presence. We go from the literal obviousness of “What you see is what you see” by Frank Stella to “What do you think it is?”
Artifacts and substitutes, Charlie H. Jeffery’s paintings are not chimeras, painted curtains, they do not represent, they present. In that, they are not that far from traditional icons, covered in gold, whose luminous brilliance had the dual function of lighting the space and arousing reflection. C. H. Jeffery uses illumination (a way of technically lighting a surface, but to lead to an awareness closer to enlightenment, the philosophical idea of the eponymous age). Face is an icon of today. No longer a holy face, but both a face, a side (which implies another side), but also an entreaty: face up to something or again a face. The titles are double-edged clues that point out other possibilities.
Green Square and Green Lake open the question of landscape. Lines, green spot, nature is a retinal impression that resembles points of light in the television test card. And de facto the question is asked directly by Paintings for Light Fittings (Florescent Yellow, Florescent Red) or What TV Station Is in You? A painting “seen on TV” or reframed by screens is a painting aware of being made in the time of moving images, and the dematerialisation of mediums, a post-medium painting. The doubt inherent in the image, in images, is that of Seeing is NOT believing or Seeing is KNOTTING believing. Charlie H. Jeffery points out the chasms, the knots in the representation system, and turns us into actors. Aware of the system, we can play with it to reorganise it. It is a playful and joyful hunt that opens (The Hunt), an incandescent fire that is that of intelligence rather than belief. Charlie H. Jeffery performs the painting, literally replays its artificiality, between set and accessories, and highlights it. A painting where enlightenment fits.
Charlie H. Jeffery is a studio painter in the sense of “studiolo” and not simply “studio.” He turns the studio into a potential stage, changing the volumes, the relationships of space and thickness, sometimes lining the walls with mirrors, adding neon tubes, or steps-predellas-stages. The fluorescent pinks, iridescent yellows, flaming reds, acidic green or jet blacks are only equaled by the actinicity of the pigments chosen, in other words their radiation. The colours are wave lengths perceivable by the human eye.
The pictures are mediums or medias as much as the TV screen or that of the cinema. […]

Marie de Brugerolle