The red books, fire, night

Since 1981, Jean-Paul Marcheschi, a painter and sculptor, has been keeping a daily journal of notes, dreams, drawings, and paintings. He defines these Red Books as “a total chronobiology of existence.” Describing how they originated and their history to this day, he comments upon his relationship to time (that of daily life, that of the old masters, that of the most ancient epochs), as well as his relationship to darkness and night. The decision to channel his work through the Red Books threw him off course as a painter. However, another encounter a few years later, with fire, was decisive. Fire has served as his brush and as a storehouse of substances, themes, and images since. With his fire brush, Marcheschi makes paintings, illustrates Red Books, paints, and also organizes huge installations in which all the elements are summoned, from the sky down to the black water in which a great number of his exhibits are bathed.