Sur le motif is a project carried out by Charles Villa during a “research and creation” residency aboard the Maison Flottante du cneai = in Poses (Haute-Normandie) in March 2024.

The Seine is subject to high water at this time of year, so the Poses dam - the last before the sea - remains open to prevent flooding. The large windows of the Maison Flottante offer a breathtaking view of powerful, hypnotic currents, as the perpetual movement of the water sweeps across the entire chromatic spectrum, depending on the position of the sun. An unchanging, ever-changing backdrop that evokes memories of the Impressionist painters who depicted it one hundred and fifty years ago.

During his residency, Charles Villa collected a series of headlines from the local press. Using only absorbent cotton and oil, he rubbed the blue pigments from the surface of the newsprint, then transferred them to standard A4 sheets. Covered with ink and fat, these sheets acquired new properties of transparency and brilliance. The artist then exhibited them outdoors in bright or low daylight, having bound them together with thin metal ties to form a sequence, a motif. This assembly of leaves, equivalent fragments of the landscape, constitutes an in situ installation designed to fit the scale of the Maison Flottante. Placed in front of the living room’s large bay window, the work marks a separation between inside and outside, leaving visitors free to move around it, to better capture the reflections of the material and see through it.

This work and the story of its creation inspired author Virginie Huet to write a short story about a stormy cruise between Paris and Honfleur.