SACHA LYS - La Couronne et le large

SACHA LYS - Mixed technique: pigment ink print, varnish applied by hand with a brush, for the durable protection of the work.

A young man with bare torso stands facing forward, head turned to the right, chin high and eyelids lowered. His brown curls wear a crown of white and cream flowers held in place by a thin gold circle. To the right of the canvas, a black cloth covers his shoulder; at lower left a white cloth is crumpled and draped. White petals have fallen and rest on his collarbone and bare shoulder. Behind him, on the left, an open window cuts a night-sea of blue-dark with light reflections; the rest is a pale, brushed wall with vertical drips.
The figure is carried through to the end, the background is not, and it is from this gap that the painting lives. The gaze does not come to the spectator: it slides out of the frame, and the sea opened a step away remains behind the shoulder. What happens here is not the open sea, it is the crown beginning to lose its petals.
Slate blues and chalk whites form the background, against the black of the fabric and a warm complexion enhanced with pink on the cheeks and lips. The skin, the curls, and the flowers are melted without any tool marks, while the wall is swept dry, scratched, allowed to run in vertical streaks. The material tightens in the crown and in the crumpled cloth at the bottom, the thickest whites of the canvas.

Mixed technique: pigment ink print, varnish applied by hand for the durable protection of the work.
Varnish applied by hand, for the depth of the blues and the durable protection of the work.
Support: premium canvas stretched on a wooden frame, ready to hang.
Format: 40 × 60 cm.
Signed SACHA LYS · Galerie Labo Joconde / Atelier Joconde · certificate of authenticity provided.

SACHA LYS is one of the creations bringing together artists Le Yack, Neo Pablo and Popsan within Atelier Joconde, a family studio where three sensibilities coexist: neo-realism, pop and free figuration. The name Sacha does not indicate boy or girl, and the lily is a white flower: the series hinges on these two words. She paints young men with bare torsos, dark curls and sidelong gazes, to whom a flower is entrusted — crown of white flowers placed on the hair, red rose pressed against the chest — and on whose skin a petal has already fallen. The complexion is treated with the precision of academic portraiture, while the background is brushed, scratched, left unfinished: slate blues, chalk whites, vertical drips. Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist lineage, that of the flowered youth and beauty seized at the moment it begins to fall apart, kept here in a modern execution where the figure is finished and the world around it is not.

Each work is a unique piece.
Instagram @atelierjoconde.

Keywords: SACHA LYS, male portrait, androgynous, crown of flowers, fallen petals, window onto the sea, brushed background, Pre-Raphaelite, Symbolism, contemporary French art, Le Yack, Atelier Joconde