SAMARITAINE 

In Samaritaine, JChadima presents one of Paris’s emblematic architectural landmarks not as a fixed monument, but as a living record of time, memory, reflection, and urban transformation. The painting emerged during a period when the historic building remained visibly deteriorated and in transition, allowing the artist to document a moment in its history that would ultimately disappear.

Before beginning the painting, JChadima undertook an extensive photographic study of the Samaritaine, recording the building from multiple sides, angles, and viewpoints. These photographs were not simply preparatory references; they became an essential part of the creative process. By repeatedly examining the structure, its windows, architectural details, surrounding buildings, and changing reflections, the artist assembled a visual archive from which the final composition could evolve.

The painting’s perspective was equally deliberate. JChadima selected and developed a viewpoint that emphasizes the monumentality and importance of the Samaritaine within the surrounding Parisian cityscape. The upward progression of the façade accentuates its scale, while the repeated geometry of the windows creates an architectural rhythm that carries the eye across and through the composition.

Within this structure, however, stability gives way to continual change. Each mirrored pane contains a different fragment—architecture, sky, light, shadow, and surrounding Parisian space. The façade consequently becomes a mosaic of individual observations, in which no single reflection defines the building. The Samaritaine is simultaneously subject, surface, and witness to the city around it.

Of particular significance is the reflected presence of Église Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. Its appearance within the glass brings separate periods of Parisian architectural history into direct visual dialogue. One historic structure is contained within the reflection of another, compressing different layers of the city’s past and present onto a single painted surface.

JChadima reinforces this interplay through restrained blues, greys, warmer architectural tones, and areas of shadow. At close range, windows become individual fields of colour and reflection; from farther away, they reassemble into the larger architectural whole. The painting consequently moves between representation and abstraction, permanence and transience, architecture, and memory.

Within the context of Paris, Samaritaine can be understood as more than an architectural portrait. The extensive photographic preparation, carefully constructed perspective, and fragmented reflections preserve the building at a specific moment of transformation while acknowledging the larger city that surrounds it. JChadima creates a portrait not simply of the Samaritaine, but of Paris as a continually evolving accumulation of architecture, history, reflection, and time.

“Every pane tells a different story; together they become a portrait of time.”

Provenance:

CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY N° 20241009120559 | REFERENCE/ISNI : 2018-04

AKOUN CERTIFIED : 9500 Euros

EXHIBITIONS :

24eme SALON DES PEINTRES DU MARAIS, HALLE DES BANCS MANTEAUX, PARIS