The path betrays a deeply felt and accepted isolation. This solitude is a starting point for an attempt to reach out. Meanwhile, the definitive shape overcomes this solitude through symbolism, linking the heterogeneous, the different, and initiating the dialogue. Kethevane Cellard has a confident, mature penstroke; it produces shapes, entities with a tangible presence, whatever their size and relationships to one another. She queries the edges by using shapes to resonate with them, to observe the outcome of their immersion in a wide-open space. With no background, no perspective that might create volume, it’s up to the shapes themselves to belong and create common ground. They often defy gravity. They are lucid but not despairing: they herald changes to come.

Those Left Behind overflow with the energy that propels them forward! Where are they headed, imbued with the vitality of the uprooted? These happy few rediscover domains previously thought to be well-known. Towards which horizons do their sails swell (in Untitled with Sails), lifting boulders in their endeavour? Or are the rocks supporting them in a multi-dimensional tension? What would Escher have thought of this concurrent superposition of multiple angles? The Discussion has the structure of a chamber orchestra. Each member plays a melody to embody a shape and bring them together for the duration of the symphony. The energy deployed by each one — to come alive, to express themselves and to communicate – is palpable. We can also hear the awkward moments, the cacophony, the missed interactions, the opportunities for agreement and harmony. Three women move in unity, each one isolated but staring at one another, subject or object—depending. Their proximity shows the entanglement of their situations, in which they grow through subtle, perilous but substantial confrontations.

All those shapes point to existence as a simultaneous ongoing phenomenon as well as a determinate expression of randomness. They also spark daydreams, leading us into a familiar yet alien intimacy: they reveal remote areas of the mind, our other reality.

The very occasional use of color, to underline the movement of a shape or its gravity, and so we realize that Kethevane Cellard’s drawings are mostly devoid of color. It is the forms themselves that provide color.