Jean-​Pierre Corbel

Peter Pan battles

Idon’t know why, but as soon as I met Alain Godon this sen­tence spo­ken by the fox from “The Lit­tle Prince” sprang to mind, “And now here’s my secret, a very sim­ple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essen­tial is invis­i­ble to the eye.” Amaz­ing, isn’t it? All the more so, as this is a metaphor I really should have used for an abstract, com­plex, “coded” work of art. Because, at a first glance, Alain’s art appears trans­par­ent, naïve, acces­si­ble and with pop­u­lar appeal.

Not that there is any­thing wrong with that! But there is more hid­den behind. If I were to tell you that in his art his paint­ings fight bat­tles, you would laugh, nev­er­the­less, this is what I believe… They are the bat­tles of Peter Pan, of those who reject the cyn­i­cism in our world, of those who fly Prévert’s stan­dard: “We should try to be happy, if only as an exam­ple”. Ah, so you think that’s sim­ple? Well, open your eyes and see the world as it really is, this world of con­sumerism that we are told to view through a dis­tort­ing lens, dis­tort­ing the image as well as dis­tort­ing the pas­sive onlooker; this world which is no longer inter­ested in the sim­ple beauty of time pass­ing, because time is money and, we sir, we don’t let money pass us by.
Ah, so you think that’s sim­ple? Then go and find that child in you, the one that you have sup­pressed and that is fight­ing for its exis­tence… that child will tell you about the love it is still seek­ing, the love it didn’t know how to give… it will tell you about Tin­ker­bell who is asleep on the win­dow sill out in the cold and who you refuse to lis­ten to, because you are afraid that if you open the win­dow, you will let Cap­tain Hook in. Well open up, don’t be afraid, lis­ten to the voice, dare to enter a world of colour! Can you see it? Are you there? Can you see the colours? Can you feel the move­ment? Well, wel­come to the world of Alain Godon, this place is spe­cial, pre­cious and the reserve of those ini­ti­ates who speak the lan­guage of the heart, who have dropped their defences, their pre­ten­sions and who are no longer afraid to talk about love, no longer afraid of being loved. You might meet Alain when wan­der­ing around “Extrav­a­ganza”… You will of course recog­nise him: he is the one dressed as d’Artagnan ready to lead new bat­tles and, he is even more vibrant in the flesh than the world of his pic­tures.
Tell him that my gal­leries are his envoys and that I am here wait­ing for him to come to Lux­em­bourg on some new adven­ture, and tomor­row… it will be the four cor­ners of the world.

Jean-​Pierre Corbel