In his heads Michel Blachère Closed eyes to the same, to celebrate life in the face of disenchant- They hear the cries of martyrs and hungry people, for- Wide eyes ment and human madness. Listen to Jacques Lacan: ‘The gotten beings. Why in history, humans have forgotten? Closed wide eyes - Paul Eluard being of man, not only cannot be understood without madness, but it would not be the being of man if he did We massacre, we kill, we terrorize, we kill and we open “From the Earth grew many heads but without a neck. And not carry in himself madness as limit of his freedom‘. the bellies of women to kill their children. Women are bare arms without shoulders wandered, and eyes that floated, raped, incests are many; society is sick. We sell children, not moored to the foreheads. You do not see them” says Oreste And the heads of David Cohen cross the wall of seeing. those who are too weak, we exterminate them. Organs in Furies, “but I do see them, these heads chase me”. Why do It is a struggle, a battlefield, they try to overcome our are taken from abandoned, poor children to give them to David Cohen’s heads hypnotize us? What do they see? ontological blindness; they see the visible but also the the richest. Horror, prostitution, homophobia, racism, What do they tell? These heads try to say things that invisible, the hidden, death. They tried to suppress art neuroses, psychoses. Governments, governments do cannot be said. But shall we not one day stop saying in the twentieth century by fields, wars, money but the nothing. They are cowards. They expect the savages to things to start seeing these things? act of creating was even stronger. “To create is to resist, kill and the civilized to commit their crimes. The trains it is to harm stupidity”. The bursting of the heads of were leaving for Dachau, Ravensbruck, Auschwitz, they Heads in clay, leather, bronze, marble show the trace, David Cohen in the landscape is so incarnated, luminous did nothing, they made us believe they did not know, and the imprint, the language of the origins, yes, presence and powerful that it moves us infinitely, at once a tender- like today, they pretended to ignore history. Red sky, it’s and absence, the power of passing time. These heads ness and a disenchantment. This tenderness, linked to raining blood. Hell is here, we cannot stop the course of see invisible things that men no longer see. And without the fright we feel in adulthood after having understood history. The dawns are always heartbreaking, the being 50 a doubt, something irreversible, terrible, unspeakable, with anguish that the world of childhood was moving is forgotten. 51 that cannot be represented happened. We know it, we away; and this disenchantment to seize life, only life, life talk about it mechanically, next to it. Families, religions, alone, what there is between men, space, forms, colors, The heads of David Cohen speak of a lost world with philosophies, financial markets are there to distract us matter, thought. We must simply be carried away by the an illuminated look on the world of tomorrow and that from this black presence. These heads give a representa- diversity of materials used and the perceptions that his of the day after tomorrow. As diviners predict destiny. tion of the what cannot be represented. works make us share, voices and ancestral ways, imper- Listen to Albert Einstein: “What if we were wrong? If we ceptible, mysterious, we hear the murmur of flowers called blue, green? Who can show a blue tree? Who’s talking The heads of David Cohen irrigate a territory, a geog- and the silence of God. The eye is listening, but the sky about fresh watercress?” writer, Arthur Rimbaud. A sculp- raphy, tell a novel, a music, how women died without a is empty. The work is here rebellion, insubordination, tor, David Cohen. dream, lost children. They also print and read poems interrogation, it is not the missing link of a society of of love, but no one to listen to them except animals, convenience. David Cohen reminds us that a work of art flowers, rocks that cannot yet read. Heads upside down, is a human creation, a meditation, a contemplation; an world upside down that never stops walking on our access to a multiple dimension in a historical complexity heads. But David Cohen guides us to other possibilities that also corresponds to his past, and today to his life as to put back Arthur Rimbaud’s paradise: “The material a Professor of Psychiatry. He tells us about the human world will only be a means to evoke aesthetic expres- adventure as an adventurer and speaks to everyone. sions. We will have feelings through lines, colors and patterns taken from the outside world, simplified and David Cohen is a colorist, color also becomes material, it tamed, a real magic”. is a song that connects men, but nothing religious, sim- ply a spirituality that allows men to say, write and share The work of David Cohen is still moving, in opposition the poetic. Listen to Roland Barthes: “Intelligence is to the finished work. “The finish is the admiration of about thinking of others”. The work of David Cohen is imbeciles” Cezanne writes to his mother. Experimenta- part of this thought, this story where the relationship to tion motivates him, and ceramics itself is a metaphysical the world, to the other, to his double, real or imaginary, question for David Cohen. Enamel and engobes give a questions him. The ‘I is another’ of Rimbaud. I think to Michel Blachère is a writer and a curator. He is the director of balance to his heads, but that’s not an idea anymore, but be the one who thinks - I am - otherwise, I would be an- the Galerie XXI in Paris that has been showing contemporary a thought that takes shape as a material captures and other, I am precisely, not me, but this other. Who am I? ceramics for more than two decades. He has presented David transforms light. The primitive past comes out of Earth Who am I really? What am I doing here? Where is the Cohen’s work twice in his gallery. He recently curated several with the earth to better occupy the space. He is a mu- stake? The heads of David Cohen answer our questions, exhibits: Re-sources at the Dêvres museum on contemporary tant, a messenger of matter who invites us also by his it’s not only the eye that looks, it’s the being – We are ceramics (October 2017 - March 2018) and Vallauris, the look, his relation to the world and to the other, but also there. What do they hear, the heads of David Cohen? beautiful story at the Sarreguemines museum (June 2017 - January 2018).