PressYVES REGNERY
Council member at André Malraux’s cabinet,
Deputy prefect,
Director of the DRAC (North) Lille
1989
“Here is the man captive, injured, assaulted, alienated, given over to his destiny; the man dealing with himself too, when he is his own yoke, wrapped in his ceremonial robe.
It’s all that, that twists and turns or is unleashed in the jungle of our « progressive societies », or in the sly jungle of our well of unconscious, it’s all that, that shows on the surface of our conscience in front of the sculptures of Braunstein, if we solidly sustain our gaze.
According to the idea of the Hindu philosopher Krishma Murti, we can’t refuse to see, but face our pain, for it births the spiritual energy, the strength capable of exorcizing out the poison.
And in that one-on-one, the work of Jacques Braunstein does not leave us orphans; it bears signs, it is animated of symbols in relation to the mysterious aspects of the creation or of destiny.
In distressing times “we don’t stop walking under the branches, seeing only the other side of the leaves, but a sing tells us that we have to continue…” (Jaqueline KELLER in “an endless love”).
In the order of symbols, the imprisonment prepares the rise; the seed is on hold for the germination. The bandages of the mummy, like the grave today, opens the period of the initiatory journey toward a new birth. The closure of the monks (and sometimes the prison itself) closes the space of contemplation to allow the rise of the spirit…
And isn’t it at times of greatest distress, in the silence coming with the terror, that the hope of a way out rises in the night of the walled-in prisoner?
But there are crimes that are the perversion of being. How could the Jews forget the Shoah, the Japanese, Hiroshima? Without feeling like intolerable accomplices.
And it’s to this unforgivable, where they have been crushed and soiled, themselves, the clear flowers of the creation, that the work of Jacques Braunstein brings us face to face with.
Here is the man overwhelmed, insulted, alienated. And here is the man, the crucified figure, given over to the stigma of all the horrors, crushed under the hideous avalanche in the mists of time.
The crucified figure in anguish with all of those who have known the abyss; the scandal of the iniquitous violence, for another destiny to be revealed, for the hope to arise of a decisive release of the spirit and the heart.
The communion with all pain and all misery, as answer to the unforgivable?”