Transcriptions of the conferences given by artist Jean-Pierre Sergent - 2026
LECTURE BY ARTIST JEAN-PIERRE SERGENT: "THE SHAKTI1 & THE METACOSMIC VOID" | MULHOUSE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS | MARCH 13, 2026
- PART 1/4 | IN THE VOID - Watch the video
- Ms. Isabelle Dubois-Brinkmann, Museum Director: Good evening, everyone. We are very pleased to welcome you this evening to the lecture by Jean-Pierre Sergent, an artist whose work “Mayan Diary #100” is featured in the exhibition “25 Years of Acquisitions” on the second floor, in the stairwell. In fact, this is the very first work you will see upon entering the exhibition. So, I’ll give a brief introduction to the artist, and then Jean-Pierre Sergent will have the opportunity to discuss his work in greater detail. He was born in Morteau, studied architecture in Strasbourg and painting at the Fine-Arts School in Besançon (1979–1981), and has since pursued an international career. In 1991, he moved to Montreal, and in 1993 to New York, and then, he chose to return to France, settling in Besançon in 2005, where he established his studio. He is an artist who experiments extensively with a wide variety of media for painting and screen printing, as well as with unconventional materials such as masonite and Plexiglas… He also works with found objects from New York… So, this is an art of experimentation. He will certainly discuss it during this lecture as well as of his “Mayan Diary” series, created in New York between 2001 and 2003, consists of a series of square-format images, one of which is featured in the exhibition. This body of work has been exhibited in several New York galleries and cultural centers. And in 2011, the artist was the subject of a monographic solo exhibition here at the Fine-Arts Museum in Mulhouse, and between 2019 and 2023, he presented his monumental series of silkscreen prints on Plexiglas at the Fine-Arts Museum in Besançon, titled “The Four Pillars of the Sky". Today, his work is widely exhibited in Europe, as well as in Canada, the United States, and since 2016, in China and Iran… Jean-Pierre, I’ll hand it over to you and thank you very much.
- Jean-Pierre Sergent: Thank you very much, Madam, and to the entire Museum team. I’m very happy to be here again tonight with you. And I’m going to present something related to my hindou influences, because I’m deeply fascinated, in my work, by Hindu cultures. So I’ll go to the computer and talk to you about these topics.... So, my presentation is titled : “The Shakti And The Metacosmic Void”. SHAKTI: this is an Indian term meaning power, might, strength. In Tantrism, this word refers to feminine energy, the active principle of the force that animates both the Universe and all the living beings that inhabit it. And the METACOSMIC VOID is a concept I drew from a book: "Ritual Art of India" by Ajit Mookerjee, who is a leading expert on Tantrism. In one of his books, there was a painting depicting this “Metacosmic Void” and it was something that truly captivated and interrogated me, because it revealed something (an idea and a concept) that I had never encountered anywhere before and that I didn't know. So I’ll talk a little about that new concept! Now, it's PART ONE, which I wanted to present, is titled: “IN THE VOID” And I actually wanted to start with a quote from Leo Tolstoy, because I read a lot of Russian novels and I find that it speaks well to the relationship between a Work of Art and its relation to the audience, and how a work of art can fundamentally change our lives!
“A true work of art destroys, in the viewer’s consciousness, the separation between the viewer and the artist. Art elevates man from his personal life to universal life.” LEO TOLSTOY
It is true that, sometimes, in art, we find ourselves entering fascinating worlds… That did not belong to us and that we did not know before. And these become new spaces for discovery.
- SUBSECTION 1: FIRST OF ALL, SOME FEW WESTERN ARTISTS & THE VOID: REMBRANDT, BARNETT NEWMAN, MORRIS LOUIS, JACKSON POLLOCK & YVES KLEIN
So here I am talking about the concept of the Void in Western Art. I have always loved this small painting by Rembrandt in the Louvre, *Philosopher in Meditation* (1606–1669), and every time I went to see that painting, I sensed a wholly metaphysical dimension, but also a profound sense of finitude and infinity. In other words, it is Man who is rooted, at once, simultaneously in the present and in his future. And the old man’s near future is, of course, to be dying soon. And it is this presence in the world, and into the void, that I would like to discuss into emptiness and a metaphysical dimension. Of course, Rembrandt is fabulous because there is—not systematically, of course, but, as in many of his works, there is an incredible presence! And here is an American painter I adore named Barnett Newman; it’s a work titled "Shining Forth (to George)" from 1961, which is at Beaubourg. And ever since my youth, when I was still living in France, I would sometimes go to Beaubourg and I’ve always been fascinated by this large canvas. Because, in fact, for me, it represents something that one could be summarized like this: God in the center, and Man and Woman to the left and right. The Positive and the Negative (yin and yang). It’s also a synthesis of energy. And besides, it’s a large-scale work! And I finally understood large-scale works only after arriving in the United States and North America! Because, for example, in Montreal, you get the impression that the sky is physically immense! Space is much larger than what we can experience here in Europe. And here is a painting titled "Beta Theta" (1961) by another American artist. You’ll understand that I’ve been greatly influenced by American artists… This painter’s name is Morris Louis, and he also worked in this manner, with empty space and streams of color filling the canvas. You can sense a kind of existential anxiety in it as well. Where does it come from? Is the space closing in? Or is it opening up? That's a truly existential and real question? And he worked with primary colors using Magna, which was a mixture of acrylic and oil paint. This was painted in the 1950s and truly represents all my pictorial influences, as American painters have greatly influenced me, thanks to their indomitable will to create freely, of course. And here is a painting, *The Deep*, 1953, by Jackson Pollock, which is also on display at Beaubourg. I’ve always been fascinated by this painting because, in a way, it’s both the Void and the Whole… It is the void that fills the fullness. It’s a bit like the moment of death, of dissolution, of orgasm… it’s a bit of a cosmic moment that is at once sexual, since one can perceive the white as sperm gushing forth and ejaculating, completely covering a woman’s vulva. A black cosmic abyss. Well, that’s my interpretation! And finally, to wrap things up, with Western artists: Yves Klein, *Le saut dans le vide* from 1960. And Yves Klein had traveled extensively in Japan, I believe, and he was also interested in Buddhism and practiced martial arts as well. So the concept of emptiness was something that was deeply ingrained in him. And it’s a magnificent photograph. There were five or six artists holding a blanket to catch him at the end of his jump! Because, of course, no one can fly, except birds. There you go!
- SUBSECTION 2: SHAKTI, TANTRISM3 & SEXUAL RADIANCE [SMALL HINDU GOUACHES & SHORT EXCERPTS FROM THE “UPANISHADS”]
The Upanishads book is a massive tome of about 1,600 pages, I believe, and I read it cover to cover; it took me two years to read it, and it’s full of interesting insights… So I’ll start now abruptly with a quote from famous filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard:
“We must show the reality of all things… ” Jean-Luc Godard, The Image Book, 2018
And in my work, that’s also somewhat what I’m showing, because I take pre-existing images and rework them; they might be pornographic or obscene images, or religious images, and so on. And that reveals a reality, things that are sometimes unsettling. And so my goal and my statement as an artist is:
To move beyond every erotic aesthetics and enter into Life and its own vital energies. To move beyond this concept, to shed, in a way, the reductive idea of eroticization and enter into the very structure of the living, spiritualized, with its orgiastic designs and the patterns of archaic or religious structures…
You’ll get a sense of what we’ll be discussing shortly… And last weekend, I thought a bit about this lecture and told myself that I absolutely had to quote, by way of introduction, this beautiful poem by Leconte de Lisle. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it? And it’s so relevant and just given what we’re all going through nowadays, because it saying so many important and true things. So here is this poem:
TO SET THE TONE! “BARBARIC POEMS,” LECONTE DE LISLE [1889]
“You live cowardly, without dreams, without purpose,Older, more decrepit than the barren earth,
Castrated from the cradle by the murderous century
Of all vigorous and profound passion.
Your brains are as empty as your hearts,
And you have defiled this wretched World
With blood so corrupt, with breath so foul,
That death sprouts alone in this filthy mire.
Men, slayers of Gods, (IT IS SO TRUE!) the time is not far off
When, sprawled on a great heap of gold in some corner,
Having gnawed the nourishing soil down to the rocks,
Knowing nothing to do with days or nights,
Drowned in the nothingness of supreme boredom,
You will die foolishly, filling your pockets.”
I came across this famous little poem on Twitter. It made a deep impression on me and touched me deeply, because it speaks to a fundamental truth, one that is instilled in us, and imposed upon us, by our contemporary societies... A sense of disgust and weariness with life somehow! And so here is an image from India. It’s a small Hindu painting. It depicts the nâyikâ, the embodiment of love for all creatures; it’s a miniature from a 1781 album from Rajasthan. I’m not sure if you can see it clearly? Because it’s full of details. These are actually orgiastic scenes depicting animals copulating with women. It sort of depicts bestiality or universal carnal love! And so I’m talking here about:
KÂLÎ THE BLACK ONE & THE SHAKTI: “TANTRISM, MYTHS, RITES, METAPHYSICS,” JEAN VARENNE
“Kâlî comes here to spend the night drinking and dancing with her favorite companions—vampires, revenants, ghosts, and gnomes of every kind—who engage in the most diverse sexual games among themselves, including all forms of bestiality and necrophilia.
Despite appearances, there is nothing demonic about this depiction; the devotees of Kâlî, who pray daily before the image of a black goddess, dripping with blood, drunk and dancing on the body of a woman embracing a corpse, actually venerate the one who allows one to “cross over death,” to go beyond the tragedy of life’s interruption and its dreadful setting to reach the blissful abode from which there is no return. “Kālī's dance (which echoes Shiva's cosmic dance) is a dance of joy; it is the ultimate symbol of victory over Evil, which is Death.”
And in fact, my work is also, in a way, a kind of dance of joy against death! Do you see this little Hindu miniature? Here, we see Kali decapitating herself and copulating with Shiva. And so there are animals, blood spurting everywhere, birds… It is a whole, a metaphysical totality. It’s something that speaks to me deeply! Here again, we see her, Kali, decapitating herself. She is always with skulls corpse and bones. And here, once again, is a small painting from Kathmandu, in Nepal. So the gods are all-powerful and they are creators of Life and harmony “through” and thanks to overflowing, unstoppable sexuality! Here is this magnificent little detail! So I will now quote a few short excerpts from the Upanishads:
EXCERPTS FROM THE “108 UPANISHADS”6 (800–500 B.C.), MARTINE BUTTEX“ANNAPURNA
In the world, whatever object one considers, it is merely a vibratory process of consciousness, and not a permanent entity.
TRIPAVIBHUTI MAHANARAYANA
Greetings to the deities! It is desire that has performed the act. Desire committed the act. It is desire that is the author of the act, not me. It is desire that acts, not me.
There is thus a shift away from human responsibility regarding desire and sexuality as a whole!
It is desire that compels the actor to act, not me. O desire, fascinating in the multiplicity of your forms, accept this offering I present to you. Hail! P. 805
KUNDALINI YOGA
Then she pierces a passage through the knot of Rudra, and then through the six lotuses. Then Shakti enjoys union with Shiva in the thousand-petaled lotus. This state must be recognized as the highest there is and the only one that grants final bliss. P. 1101
TATTVA YOGA
Like the fragrance in the flower, like the butter in the milk, like the oil in the sesame seed, like the gold in the nugget, there is a lotus in the cavity of the heart. It turns downward, while its stem rises. Its essence (bindu5) flows downward, and at its center lies the mind. P. 1124
MUNDAKA
From joy springs all creation; by joy it is sustained; toward joy it proceeds; and to joy it returns.”
I think this idea of creating in total joy is truly very important because here, in France, we work only in suffering and pain. So, here you see some of my first silkscreen prints using Hindu images that I printed in New York in 1997. So it’s acrylic paint screen-printed on Japanese rice paper. It depicts a male penis intertwined with a female vulva; it is also entangled with a ritual adornment of the tantric shamanic goddess Rus-pa'i-rgyan, made from the bones of human corpses. And here is a diagram illustrating the kalpas (units of time in Hindu cosmology, cycles of 4.32 billion years; this represents the duration of one day in the life of the god Brahma). These are the cycles of time in Hinduism. These are my current new works: “Karma Kali, Sexual Dreams & Paradoxes” from 2024. They are very erotic works, sometimes featuring a few obscene words. Here, there are also pornographic images that I’ve sourced and reworked, which are screen-printed and superimposed, for example, with images of Egyptian stars.
- PART 2/4 - WATCH THE VIDEO
- SUB-PART 3: THE METACOSMIC VOID
THE DEFINITIONS
- 1, Shakti: means “power,” “might,” “strength.” In Tantrism, this word refers to feminine energy, the active principle of the force that animates both the Universe and all the living beings that inhabit it.
- 2, The metacosmic void, pure consciousness: a Hindu concept inspired by the title of a small 18th-century Hindu gouache (Ritual Art of India, Ajit Mookerjee).
- 3, Tantrism: refers to a body of texts, doctrines, rituals, and initiatory methods within Hinduism. Etymologically, it is the combination of two Sanskrit words: tanoti, meaning expansion, and trayati, meaning liberation, which gave rise to the word tantra, “expansion-liberation.” According to Tantrism, sexuality is a privileged path to the spiritual. It is therefore sacred.
- 4, Kālī the “Black One”: In Hinduism, she is the goddess of preservation, transformation, anti-morality, and destruction. Those who worship her are freed from the fear of destruction. In art, Kali is often depicted in copulation with her iconic elements: Multiple arms signify her countless abilities. A protruding tongue symbolizes the consumption of vices. A garland of skulls and a sword demonstrate her role as liberator from the cycles of reincarnation.
- 5, Shiva: “the good one, the bringer of happiness,” is a Hindu god; he is depicted as a yogi possessing universal, supreme, and absolute knowledge, even in a state “beyond knowledge.”
- 6, The Upanishads (800–500 BCE): From the Sanskrit upa, meaning physical displacement, ni, meaning downward movement, and shad, meaning to sit, conveying the idea of “coming to sit respectfully at the master’s feet to listen to the teaching.” It is a collection of philosophical texts that form the theoretical basis of the Hindu religion.
- 7, The Bindu Point: In Hindu metaphysics, Bindu is considered the point from which creation begins and can become unity. It is also described as “the sacred symbol of the cosmos in its unmanifested state.” It is the point around which a mandala is created and represents the Universe in its entirety.
.- 8, Vīrya, is a Sanskrit word meaning “effort,” “perseverance,” “diligence,” “vigor,” “energy,” “heroism,” or “enthusiasm.”
- 9, Dharma: the Order of things, the Universal Law. And, consequently: Hinduism, the human (religious) form of the Cosmic Norm.
- 10, Samâna (vital breath): is a Sanskrit term that corresponds, in Indian philosophy and more specifically in Yoga, to the flow of vital energy.