Frédérique L0utz - Zero - All Zeros Pass Through Rome

Zero does not exist in the Roman numeral system; it is an abstraction. Zero is the number that, for the Arabs, encompassed all other numbers. Today, it orchestrates all scales, all gradations, and plays a role in all codes and all forms. A void that absorbs everything. For me, Rome is an active pause that connects and offers an interpretation of all pasts and all futures. The zero moment. The absolute present. The soft harmony of Rome’s warm tones and the low-hanging sun have awakened in me the desire to immerse myself entirely in the materiality of this number and of shadows. The black ink of the drawings made in Rome during this one-year stay at the Villa Medici (Roman vacation) seeks to give shape and substance to these elusive, sombre yet loquacious wanderers. It is they who have revealed to me the stories of the construction of the world of men, of their quests intertwined with conquests and defeats, moving from all their beginnings toward the singular and triumphant end. Here, the awareness of the vast territory of beginnings and the promising multiplicity of lines in the process of becoming solidify the ethereal eternal abode. The shadows—these sirens—sing of the dense depths of the collages of time in this Rome of marvelous facets; their optical and tangible illusions, blending the phantasmagorical and the ghostly, make crossing through the mirror possible. Dream merges with reality. The double becomes blurred. Dimensions intersect. The labyrinth completes the palimpsest. The painting hangs on the wall; I chose once again to feed the mobile by staying true to my faithful companion: drawing. I tried to carve its furrow with a pen, to invent power. Its networks of lines and hatched surfaces, along with my collections of discarded and purchased objects, have allowed me to map out an active memory—walking through the city, surveying my life.