PARIS, FRANCE.- Musée de la Poste presents Hervé Télémaque, a retrospective of one of the most outstanding artists from the Figuration narrative. For almost 50 years Hervé Télémaque has been creating works sprung from encounters, memories, conflicts and connections which, according to what he says, essentially consists in playing with appearances. This exhibition brings together all the various aspects of the production of one of the most outstanding artists from the Figuration narrative: a hundred paintings, collages, assembled or imaginary items and drawings.

In the late fifties Hervé Télémaque discovered Abstract Impressionism in New York. But as soon as he arrived in Paris in 1961, he attempted to set himself apart from such notorious pop formalists as Warhol or Lichtenstein whose attitude precluded any form of commitment or criticism of the consumer society and therefore chose figurative art. In 1964, the exhibit entitled Everyday Mythologies, organised with Bernard Rancillac and Peter Foldes, while drawing on the techniques of pop art, took a critical view of the objects we are surrounded by. Hervé Télémaque was born in Haïti, spent time in New York and became French by choice. Neither totally white nor totally black, he draws from his biography in order to create works which are full of everyday items, animals, words that create a very rhythmical and colourful narrative fiction. Borrowing from advertising, the media, comic books and everyday items, his artistic vocabulary seems to be a means of decoding reality and exploring his own obsessions.