Departmental museum of the Abbey of Saint-Riquier

Septembrer 18 - November 21, 2004

 

Thomas is a poet as well as a visual artist, a magician of the shapes’ harmony. In a sensitive meditation, dominates the need to create, to go ever more forward. Several languages coexist in order to better follow the requirements of the research. They are the milestones, as well as the mark of a demanding path, marked by the thirst for discovery.

From perception to representation, from intuition to organization Thomas Salet is a great technical experimenter. China ink and watercolor, black or white, colors, are serving a pictorial expression that does not play on the fantastic, but tames an inner language in obsessive combinations. It tackles without artifice different processes (blown stain, printed, scratched, projected, cast) to create with ease and in great freedom.

From one piece to another arise sensitive forms, hidden signs by appearances. The world of microscopic biology seems to inspire Thomas Salet for the retranscriptions of distant universe, before the writing. Tireless, he explores with obstinacy, as much the strangeness of nature as the sinuosities of the unconscious. Its rich and happy nature is reflected in its creation: it exerts on us a fascination, due to a balance between the sign and the meaning, between sensibility and state of grace.

A phrase by Klee best summarizes Thomas Salet's approach : "The artist does not restore the visible ; it makes visible. »

 

Marie-Pascale Prévost-Bault

Chief Curator of the departmental museums of the Somme.