Dominique Goblet's 'Ostende' Graphic Novel Originals at Galerie Martel

Dominique Goblet's 88 original plates for her autobiographical graphic novel 'Ostende' are on display at Galerie Martel in Paris until January 22, 2022. The artist fled Brussels for Ostende in 2019 after a painful breakup, seeking refuge in the Belgian seaside town haunted by the spirits of Spilliaert, Ensor, and Arno. She paints empty beaches, green seas, and gray skies in gouache, framing them with colored bands and triangles that represent the view from inside a bunker. The plates, published by Fremok in the collection 'Amphigouri' (88 pages, 32 euros), inadvertently reveal a slow autobiographical narrative of romantic melancholy followed by sexual healing, echoing Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing' (recorded during his rehab on the same beach). The work recalls Jean-Philippe Toussaint's 'The Disappearance of the Landscape', a monologue detailing the cottony, obscured visions of a man confined to death in Ostende.