Isabelle Vrinat
A Work in Cycles
For nearly thirty years, I have been developing a body of work encompassing painting, drawing, film and writing, structured in narrative cycles. Each cycle grows out of the one before it: figures, myths and images reappear, not to be repeated, but to be transformed.
My birds in flight became landscapes telling the story of the fall of Icarus. My carcasses became pictorial narratives in which death is present. My boat threatened by an enormous wave became Dante’s boat.
The body is the starting point of my work. I work with models whom I ask to embody myths, narratives or scenes. From their presence emerge the images that move through and connect the different cycles of my work.
In a Dark Wood (2011–2017) forms the matrix of this universe. It is in this cycle that the major figures and themes that will later run through my work first appear: Icarus, flight and fall, the forest, sacrifice, the metamorphosing body, the struggle with the other — or with one’s double, a struggle that is also an embrace. This first cycle is one of being lost and of the desire to find a way out.
Beach Scenes (Waiting for the Barbarians) (2019–2022) brings this exploration into the present. The beaches become spaces of memory where the living encounter those who return, where history meets myth, celebration meets mourning. Ancient figures resurface in the contemporary world, as though the past continued to inhabit our present gaze.
Shall We Break the Mirror? (Studio Scenes) (2020–2025) grows out of the face-to-face encounter between the painter and her models. The mirror is at first a surface that separates, then becomes a passage through which roles are reversed. From this exploration emerged paintings, a film (The Painter and the Model) and new variations inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (Hey, Death! Will You Be My Friend?).
Dance Now, We Shall Be the Last (2023) is a danse macabre that joyfully leads the living towards an ending that already carries within it the promise of a new beginning.