Works on paper: “The Forgotten Portfolio #1” | Montreal 1991-1992

THE FORGOTTEN & MYSTERIOUS PORTFOLIO: PRESS IMAGES CLIPS, DUALITY, AFFINITIES & CONFRONTATIONS [silkscreen from Montreal, 1991-1992]

“For me, it is perpetual pain and the shadow and night of the soul, and I have no voice to cry out.”

Antonin Artaud, Fragments of a Journal from Hell

I have always had this irresistible and irrepressible urge to collect and salvage images, ever since I was a child. Back in the early 90s, when I was living in Montreal and New York, I would buy the Sunday edition of the New York Times every single Sunday without fail, and I would quickly and eagerly scan through it, looking for images that would catch my eye. It didn't matter how they affected me, whether they provoked excitement, disgust, aversion, or simply emotion and/or desire! 
I needed to report on the news of the noisy world in which I was living at the time and, very often, on the madness of our consumer society and the immense ultra-desire or terror that these images, which imposed themselves on me as if they were being told, recounted, narrated, ultimately, in yet another night of Scheherazade before a more than probable death. 
Certainly, an artist cannot remain speechless, stupid, inert, and incredulous in the face of the spectacle of a world falling apart; he must bear witness and take sides...
And then, what would become of the world and myself after these small testimonies? no one knows and no one will ever know, but these silkscreen works, found in this mysterious portfolio after having disappeared and lain dormant for nearly 30 years, nevertheless bear witness to my presence and my desire to be in the world and to bear witness, as an artist, to those years in North America in the 1990s...

Jean-Pierre Sergent, artist, Besançon, October 27, 2025

- ORIGIN OF IMAGES & TECHNIQUES:

Most of the images used in these new series come from press clippings, which I first resized to a rectangular format with a ratio of 1/2 of 35 by 17.5 centimeters, then photocopied to produce positive screen printing films, which I then screen printed on different types of paper: newspaper itself, 250g screen printing paper, sometimes enhanced with acrylic paint, or even on photocopies of press articles on acid-free paper. 

- DIMENSIONS:

The dimensions of these silkscreen works vary and they are all unique prints, here are the approximate sizes:

- 1 - 90, "The Hidden Silkscreens", 1992, hand-silkscreened acrylic paint and acrylic paint on newsprint, unique print, 67 x 52 cm. 
- 91 - 117, "The Hidden Silkscreens, The Odalisque", 1992, hand-silkscreened acrylic paint and marker on white acid-free paper, single print, 46 x 61.5 cm.