Anatomical walls
In Metamorphe(s), Arghaël has prolonged his relationship with the body and accentuated his floating figures. The artist, like an animal searching for the souls of beings and things, hovers over his canvas, unveiling twirling bodies that have a dialogue with the great artists who confronted the determined power of their models, from Egon Schiele to Francis Bacon, through the filiform bodies of Giacometti and the organic faces of Artaud. Arghaël is keen to travel elsewhere, to gallop with materials, to climb a stretched linen rock in order to restore strength, to assault, with an unpremeditated candor.
Living distortions
Flesh emerges… the canvas becomes a new skin where the meeting of the moving artist and the immobile model takes place. The artist is horizontal on all fours on top of the canvas to bring the skin to life, and the stoic model watches this vital agitation that turns their body into raw material. It is a transmutation of the body, a sort of passage and greeting. It is about reaching a moment, allowing accidents to occur, permitting the fine dust of charcoal and pastels to break under the pressure of the artist's swift gestures. It is about distorting reality and giving birth to a madness of life, of language.
Body mutations
Another vision for Arghaël’s drawings is the transformation of bodies, a kind of metamorphosis. The complex figures tend to mix, evoking both ecstasy and pain in a paradoxical weaving of emotions. The body twists and levitates at the same time, causing suspense, creating an enigma to decipher. This alchemical dance is made by figures who appear genderless. When he draws the body of a woman, he removes certain aspects of her femininity to create an ambiguous intimate space. Arghaël provokes duels on his canvases, between the model and artist, violence and sweetness, man and woman, fauna and nymph, black charcoal and pastel colors, speed and patience, movement and stillness, sensual caresses and harsh wounds. His works are metamorphoses initiated by a "gaieté noire", a living vision of the universe as bodies. The artist then invites the visitor to feel the canvas, to feel, as a ricochet, that this meeting has taken place. Thus, he offers us to see flesh anew, the fruit of this mutation of bodies.
— Lionel Dax, extract taken from Métamorphe(s), March 2019