ART FOR CHANGE

The red thread connecting the works of Paul-Yves Poumay, often complex and sometimes difficult to understand at first glance, is disruptive abstraction, which with a universalist inspiration is capable of enveloping users, guiding them into the complex world of the artist—a world made of truth, emotional intensity, contradiction. A world that reflects the current reality, with its excesses, vibrant colors, and inexhaustible richness of meaning. In contrast, the means used by Poumay are endowed with the ability to convey simple yet very profound messages. It's an instinctive, immediate language, devoid of formalisms and pretensions. He freely explores all nuances of color, tinting his paintings with a wide range of pigments, from the brightest tones to others that are distinctly darker and more unsettling. His works aim to express a feeling, an emotion, as powerfully as possible and closely related to the characteristics of a world, the one in which we live, constantly evolving. At the same time, the artist's attraction to the monstrous, the dreamlike, and the undefined, explosive in several works, is evident.

Art for Change is the art of the future, art that actively engages in social issues to fight injustices and provoke widespread renewal. The system is largely corrupted, and often this aspect, instead of being denounced, is concealed to let immorality and degeneration flourish freely. But art is a free language and, as such, can afford the luxury of highlighting very complex issues that divide public opinion. Poumay's denunciation of contemporary society is no exception in this regard, and the effects of creeping consumerist frenzy are at the root of the works that make up the first part of the exhibition, a testimony of how capitalism should not be considered as a model to continue to inspire in the years to come. The works in question aim to illustrate the most immoral side of our society, a society that burns forests, profits economically from migrant trafficking, exploits capitalism as a means to bend and kneel the weakest, uses corruption to reach power, practices sexist violence, and incites the ostentation of material goods. The critique of the capitalist system emerges with particular clarity in the work Syndrome de Bezos, in which, at the center of a charred wooden table surrounded by a bright red frame, three gold coins stand out, a symbol of rebirth. If the charred wood is a metaphor for man's destructive action and his obsession with the money god, which often leads only to destruction and desolation, the gold coins represent a flower of rebirth amid this colorless and shapeless abyss. They are a contribution paid by the architects of this destruction who, with the only means they know, attempt to remedy the harm caused to redeem themselves and make hope shine where there is nothing left, what remains of a world burned; burned by man's greed, by his unceasing thirst for power and money. The primitivism evoked by Poumay's works, concerned with Art Brut or raw art, is the artist's response to this crisis of the human being and the entire world. Suddenly, we stop being modern and avant-garde living beings convinced we know the answer to every question, and in the works of the artist-philanthropist, we become prehistoric creatures, devoid of the typical survival techniques of the contemporary era.

Overall, the production of Paul-Yves Poumay showcased here demonstrates a total absence of academic artifice in the artistic approach, but rather the use of engaging spontaneity, traceable in the immediate and loose traits of his figurative language. As the artist himself declared, creating for him is life, an irresistible need he cannot give up, and his modus operandi is a sincere testimony to this. The source of inspiration for Poumay is a subtle variable deriving from factors such as the artist's mood, desires, ideas, and his personal interpretation of events and current affairs, as well as images, sounds, smells, sensory perceptions. Poumay, in essence, considers art as the universal medium capable of connecting people both in time and space, making dialogue and introspection possible.