GENNADY BLOHIN

ANDRÉ MAYNET

ANDRÉ MAYNET, France

André photos and paintings shows the viewer real and vulnerable women, real people  reflecting real feelings and struggling with the look for real freedom. André is a truly Master showing them in their most vulnerable state. However, not usually lacking of sensuality... To be naked is to be vulnerable. And it’s terrifying. The feeling of being naked is different from the feeling of being nude. Nudity is exposition for appreciation, objectified and displayed. Nakedness, however, is to be one’s true self, stripped of disguise and freed of pretense. André Maynet seems to make the viewer question if Nakedness is more than being undressed. Is Nakedness  that feeling you get when you open up your deepest, darkest secrets to a friend you’re still not sure whether to trust?  Questons such as:To take your walls down and masks off in front of another living, breathing human being is frightening? You feel anxious and unsafe and unsure and vulnerable and defenseless. You feel afraid. You don’t know if the person finally seeing the real you, the you under the disguise and beneath the mask, will appreciate you or not. “What if she/he judges me? What if he/she starts to see me differently? What if she/he doesn’t like what she/he sees?” We’re all scared to be seen for who we really are because when you’re exposed like that, you’re no longer totally in control of you. You’ve given another person the opportunity to judge or despise you. And when that person does, you feel derogatorily reduced into someone not as great as you’d like to be. Everyone wants to be great, down to the deepest, realest parts of ourselves. But when those deepest, realest parts are judged by others, you feel crushed and ashamed and defeated and worthless. And it’s absolutely petrifying to put yourself in such a risky position. Perhaps,The reason some people are just so hard to get to, the reason some people take so long before they open up, is because they’ve risked being naked before and got exactly what they feared would happen. They were judged. Their truest selves were regarded as not good enough. Or maybe the Artist is making a statement : To be naked is to be vulnerable . And it’s terrifying.