Pol Taburet

A Couple

A Couple by Pol Taburet depicts two vaguely human figures rendered in the artist’s hallmark primary and secondary color scheme, encompassed by a vast background of deep black. Toying with juxtapositions of flatness and depth, as well as a variety of visual and physical textures, Taburet captures moments of transformation and mutation by contrasting and confronting forms in his paintings. Despite their anatomical human attributes such as ears, mouths, hands, and breasts, the artist’s use of airbrush techniques to depict these features emphasize the figures’ ghostly or alien qualities. Often rendering glowing auras within or around his figures, Taburet considers the airbrush as a tool that feeds his pictorial language. Distorting bodily markers of traditional masculinity and femininity, this work represents the transformation of human bodies into other-worldly figures. In this conceptual vein, the circus, carnivals, and Caribbean mythology are major inspirations in this work and many of Taburet’s paintings. By embodying notions of transmission and transformation, such themes offer a wealth of images, references, and stories that expand the artist’s formal language. The artist explains that there is a creolisation inherent in Caribbean mythology; it has resisted many attempts at suppression and erasure, so in order to survive, these ideas and narratives have mutated, not unlike the figures in his paintings.