Icarus' dream?

Perhaps.

Sacha Ketoff sometimes called his models oizos.

I don't know why, but it suited him. With Sacha, in retrospect, we didn't really know why; there was such a richness to this man, extreme modesty combined with phenomenal braggadocio. But that's not what's important now; it's the work. Maïa Muller invites us to rediscover it in sequences. In spring 2016, it's the sequence oizos. Since his first exhibition Aircrash (remnants of crashed fighter planes), Sacha Ketoff had set himself up high near the stratosphere, from which he sometimes had, let's face it, a bit of trouble getting down. Then he took over his planes, Spitfires and birds, and subjected them to every possible form of abuse. For a long time, it was a pigeon or some other bird (what else could you see flying in Ivry?) I spent a lot of time watching the desiccated animals he set up on his work table, not understanding what he was getting at; I found it, shall we say, morbid.

Then I realized that they were often self-portraits.

One day the oizo fell. But before it fell, it flew over cities, crossed paths with Spitfires, flew over Ivry and ended up on the narrow balcony of an artist attentive to the sky and all that hovers. Sacha Ketoff has spent years taking on the tormented shape of collapsed birds. Failed landings but superb watercolors. A series of birds in gold or nero intenso floating gently in the studio breeze. He was an artist completely taken over by his passion for drawing, his delight in supports and tools: waxed silk paper, glued, in superimposed sheets that he manufactured himself as an absolute maniac of materials, tools and machines. His notebooks, pencils, gouache, watercolor, a symphony of soft colors and dark nocturnal intensities, all worked flat, on the sheet, facing his model. Or on the giant sheet that floated on the wall of his studio, moving with the slightest breeze. The lightness of his works on paper is inherent to the material; the artist would sometimes contradict it with the force of his message. A statement in which he associated, in turn, beautiful machines, splendid women, fine pairs of shoes (which he shined more willingly than the boots of art critics), intense sensuality, but also industrial objects, a motorcycle, oars... and himself. The exhibition proposed by Maïa Muller, two years after the artist's death in April 2014, is a brief panorama of this volatile subject and of volatiles joined by some of his favorite tools: shoes, pencils... not to mention the artist himself, present in one of his many portraits. Other birds and subjects wait in trunks. May Maïa Muller help us discover the uncharted territories of Sacha Ketoff's universe. One day, perhaps, we will be granted the privilege of fully discovering the totality of his work and his many talents.

In civilian life, Sacha Ketoff often wore a red beret.

Francis Lacloche