INTRODUCTION “Series & Portraits” | XAVIER LÖWENTHAL | Author, illustrator & publisher (La 5e Couche) | 2021 — Lucas Racasse’s series and portraits belong to a kind of baroque aesthetic we might call bumper-car baroque (or auto-scooter, as he might have said himself back in his Brabant childhood), with the marbled flesh and muscle of Rank Xerox, Liberatore’s cult hero, and, at the same time, the quiet chiaroscuros of Hopper’s paintings. His Cindy Sherman-like film stills—of films that don’t always exist—depict sordid scenes of violent news items, always bathed in a kind of boreal light, like a Fra Angelico annunciation. Guy Peellaert was his master, his muse, the fairy godmother who leaned over his cradle. Peellaert, who needed just one image to say everything the 129,600 frames of a film might try to. That’s a lot of names in just a few lines. But Racasse’s imagination overflows with references—he’s a cultured man. Racasse has worked extensively in live art (and yes, a wild party is live art). What lives, dies—except for the moment, which can sometimes be eternal. His work precedes the event, announces it, occasionally accompanies it. The event passes. It gives rise to those eternal moments—then vanishes. Another one comes along, and the cycle begins again. It’s a jerky, frenetic rhythm. One must go fast, deliver on time. It’s a team sprint. Once the finish line is crossed, Racasse, now free of any outside pressure and driven only by his inner urgency, returns to the solitude of the long-distance runner. Because he’s still running—he can’t stop. Like the revolution, which, as with a bicycle, must keep moving to stay upright. He plunges back with delight into the patient, obsessive work of the artisan, until the next event pulls him away. That’s how he outwits the blank page: by carrying on, alongside his work as an event artist, multiple ongoing series that never truly end. Movie posters for films that don’t exist. Dioramas of battlefields (Waterloo! Waterloo!) that echo current political events and the “great men” who shape them through elections and war, under the sly gaze of Walter Bull, his Beelzebub. Chicory, fries, atomiums (atomia?), Saint King Baudouin and his virgin Fabiola. The rotting truth of flesh within cliché representations of kitsch love. Sex workers portrayed like queens… And don’t be surprised if you don’t recognize all the Warhol-style pop icons in Racasse’s portraits—to him, all his friends are pop stars. Excerpt from Every Day is Picture Day | 2020