Neon Redemption

The icon emerged from Christian crypts. Mosaics, like encrypted pixels, were traded in the catacombs of Rome and Lutece, creating a confidential collector's market before emerging in the temples patrons of an ever-evolving sacred art. Then she became Hellenistic, seeking Renaissance grace from popes to pop from Mona Lisa to Marilyne Monroe. But above all, the icon is the impassive and serene portrait of the mother, of the Virgin Mary. The mother’s face is the first landmark of the newborn, the first love, the first cartography of our life, the first face of a long road, where along the way we define ourselves in comparison to others. The landscape of time, that of a lifetime, is not made of sunset or starry nights. It is made of the faces that we have met, onto which we have projected our differences and our similarities. In this journey, there are unique, singular moments of prayer, meditation, introspection. In these moments, we place ourselves in front of an icon, a portrait on which we project ourselves, like a mirror of the soul, in an ultimate face-to-face moment stripped of narcissism, of social makeup, honestly reflecting on our condition, our journey. We project into it our hopes, our morals, or the humble satisfaction of knowing the grace that surrounds us. To stroll in a church or in an exhibition hall, it is then to seek an anchor point, a support where one thinks about it, one reflects on it. This we have always done, from cave paintings, since the dawn of time, sheltered from storms, in deep galleries, around sacred homes where stories were told. Shadows danced on the walls where we projected our individuals, our hands blown with pigments in the middle of the animals to be hunted, of their transhumance, tracing with chalk the first mythologies, the first burials, the first calendars, the first cosmogonies of which we were the witnesses. Why are we witnesses of all these things? Our caves were cathedrals. Our cathedrals are caves where we take refuge, where we are welcomed out of time, inside stone, inside ourselves.