Timothy Archer was born in 1982 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. 

Painter, draftsman and sculptor, he currently lives and works in Lille.

A graduate of the Faculty of Plastic Arts in Lille, he exhibited in 2011 in several European cities, including Paris, Marseille, Berlin and Prague. Timothy Archer deploys a fresh and luminous palette in the heart of energetic and powerful canvases, with a hairline and a new fluidity where the animal and the myth come together to constitute a fable filled with trophies, punctuated by games of curves and counter-furious curves in synchrony with the color.

More monumental and hypnotic than ever, the 2019-2020 vintage installs before our eyes baroque creatures, powerful and resilient women, hypothetical romantic encounters and the underlying energy of life.

News from Eéa

“At the time of the last cosmogony I heard from Eéa

In the middle of the water, an island surrounded by mist seemed to appear,

expand or contract

The whole place as we approached belied our senses

the silhouette of a tree becoming a dancing nymph

and the mirage disappeared again

it was just an animal that humbly scratched its belly

The sailors finally set foot on land and the large inventory

of blood and ether

on the island of Eéa could begin:

Goodbye calf, cow, pig, brood

hello fauns, spirits, gods…….. Circe

the magician, empress of these places

seemed to reconcile all things with herh simple wish

The fertile seeds of the last revolt

had magically stranded here

and the spawn of the titans, in a strange way

in a thousand and one creatures prospered

a new era dawned in Eéa

Polyphemus, having become a gentleman, served the sweet wine of the cicones from the carafe

A rejuvenated Poseidon slept not far away

a laughing faun finished his meal…

The myths, under the weight of the years, were completely shattered

the tales one by one fell asleep

and the great tapestry of legends must have been on the work handed over

Ouranos in his fall had compromised them

From the base and with the help of Hecate

it was necessary to rewrite time and capture the winds

giving free rein to the fertile imagination

of the slightly crazy witch that Ulysses had in romance.

thus in Eéa everything could be reborn

and from this distant island I could be a priest. »

Timothy Archer, 2023

 

Birds and gods

I/Cosmogonies

“There are moments of painting that suspend time and history, and chapters of our own narrative that, once opened, seem to draw the whole known universe into their center. A black dot becomes a spiral, then morphs into an elegant nautilus that may one day turn into an entire galaxy.

This exhibition finally makes the link between me and me, between the symbolism that has inhabited my mind since my early childhood and the watermark of my human experience.

I know that I know nothing, except perhaps that from the beginning, from the first breath, everything was already present.

Like a treasure hunt, we sow behind us small pieces of bread for the less fortunate, and for the others much more practical pebbles if one day we wish to understand our own wandering on this earth.

The painter, luckier still, sows images, stories, laughter interspersed with cries, moments of memories permanently inscribed somewhere, between the retina and the reptilian brain of the viewer.

Paradigms–Counter-Spells–Didascalies–Songs and Golems–Birds and Gods—Cosmogonies

Like a troubadour or a bard or a druid, I sowed ideas in the world, gently, delicately, without understanding until now that it was my spirit that I sowed, that these ideas and tales would change the movement of my hand and the gluttony of my eye forever.

In this exhibition, drawn in my mind like a moving allegory, I have chosen to invoke the myths that are dear to me, the legends that have helped me breathe, the primordial soup that nourishes me and the colored fire that reside. For to become one’s own dream, one must also become a demiurge and invoke brushstroke after brushstroke a new world filled with archetypal servants or allies.

Where harshness exists everywhere, the hypnotic movement of the brush can smooth out the corners.

Where the dictators are, the artist has only to evoke anarchy. Where the world is bored, the artist invokes magic.

It is therefore with the idea of a trip to the blue and black depths of the abyss that I chose to plant my flag, in a symbolic dive into the heart of a world by nature silent that I was able to better listen to myself, and by the salvation offered by a funny rebound that only those authorized to play with the meaning of things know, it is enough to say like Hermès sometimes that whatever is above is like what is below, and whatever is below is like what is above that the abyss becomes the infinite space contained in the confines around us everywhere present, that the ocean becomes a forest, that the whale becomes an elephant and the fish flying through the air is transformed without difficulty into the mythical bird of the Stymphalian lake.

In the cultures of the world of yesterday and today, I have looked for the trace of the image of a free traveler, witness to the birth and fall of empires, who, through his resilience, has become a beacon, a symbol of creative chaos that surrounds and inhabits us.

From the Celtic Lugus to Hermès/Mercure, from the image of the wandering Jew to that of the Hermit of the Tarot de Marseille, the madman, the sorcerer, the artist, the pythia, the healer or Aesop in person, are those who have always played with the zeitgeist (“the spirit of the times”) and tame the drafts of an archaic palace filled with hatred and sadness.

Because to carry on your belt the heavy and clanking set of a whole universe of ardent symbols, the spelling of a hard-won vocabulary of images and the biting bestiary that has always been at our side present, it is necessary to understand first and well obviously that we still need “to have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star”.       Timothy Archer, January 2022

“Timothy Archer executes drawings in charcoal and black pastel from which spring masks, demons, portraits and fantastical animals, before bringing in color to give them body and texture. His universe can be related to that of the German expressionists”.

Maire C. Aubert, La Gazette de l’Hotel Drouot #3,  24/04/2014

2020
‘Le chant des golems’, 11 juin-18 juillet 2020, Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris

2019
‘Africa now’, 10 janvier-23 février 2019, Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris

2018
‘Dialogue avec les anges’, exposition personnelle, 7 décembre 2018- 4 février 2019 Hospice d’Havré, Tourcoing, Commissaire Dominique Polad-Hardouin

2017
‘Didascalies’, exposition personnelle, 23 février-18 mars, Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris.
‘Art Karlsruhe’ du 16 au 19 février Galerie Christophe Tailleur Allemagne
”Comme un’ exposition de collages du 11 février 1mars 2017 Galerie Area Paris
‘Lille Art Up’ avec ART BUNKER GALLERY du 2 au 5 Mars Lille

2016
‘Father Figures Are Hard To Find’, Exposition collective, 19 mars-1mai, NGBK, Berlin. 
‘Contre-Sorts’, exposition personnelle, 4-27 février, Galerie Polad-Hardouin, Paris.
‘St.Art art fair Strasbourg’,Galerie Christophe Tailleur
‘Perpetuum Mobile’, Galerie Polad- Hardouin
‘YIA art fair’,Galerie Christophe Tailleur

2015
“Stand up, Face the wall” Gallery P98a Berlin Exposition personnelle
‘Vive la peinture’, exposition collective, 1 – 27 septembre, Galerie Polad-Hardouin, Paris 
‘Art Paris Art Fair’, Galerie Polad-Hardouin 
”Outsider Art Fair New York’, Galerie Polad-Hardouin  
‘Kabinet du dessin”, La Kabinet, Bruxelles

2014
Première exposition personnelle à la galerie Polad-Hardouin, Paris
‘Outsider Art Fair Paris’, Galerie Polad-Hardouin
Timothy Archer, Galerie Septentrion, Marcq-en-Baroeul

2013
‘Mi-Temps’, Galerie Polad-Hardouin, Paris
‘Les Nouveaux Collectionneurs au collège’, Galerie d’art du Conseil Général des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseille
‘Dawn of The Hermetics’, Berlin
Expositions d’œuvres sur papier et autres, Galerie Quai Est, Ivry-sur-Seine
‘Fire in the hole’, Galerie Patricia Milano, Prague
”Cet art qui m’entreprend #2′, Nouveaux collectionneurs, UPE13, Marseille

2012
‘L’amour héroïque”, International Bongo Bongo Brigade, Musée des beaux-arts Eugène Leroy Tourcoing
”SOS Kunststück, SOS-Kinderdörfer Weltweit charity auction’, Allemagne 
‘The Eerie Show’, Phantom Projets, Paris 
Nouveau Collectionneurs, Marseille
‘The hair in the cannibal prophetic soup of Dr. Emil Holub’, NTK, International Bongo-Bongo Brigade, Prague
‘A votre décharge’, Château de Servières, Marseille

2011
All over, intervention, Tourcoing