... still ironic is the work of Jean Paul Forest (...). His works are derisory reparations on the periphery of the marks left by the bulldozers that have scarred the isolated valleys of Tahiti : symbolically, the artist takes in charge the damage caused by the technical and symbolic mastery of the territory. Broken blocks of stones are reassembled, sewn back together, stitched to repair the ravages of time and the promethean work of Man. (...). In very Gauguinesque terms he explains his need of isolation and of references to a different culture than that of his own education. Just like the painter, he senses a Tahiti caught up by the West. His work on land spaces, close to land art, resonates with Gauguin's projects. (...) . The pins left by Forest in the stones and landscapes, do not attempt to heal the fractures that followed the arrival of Gauguin and those colonists and tourists before and after him who, deliberately or in spite of themselves, contributed to the westernisation of Tahiti ?

Jean-François Staszak, Senior Lecturer at the Sorbonne University, Paris, in “ Géographies de Gauguin ”, published by éd. Bréal, Paris , 2003 (traduction)