Béatrice Casadesus — Pluies d’Or — DUTKO / Ile St. Louis Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 25, 2017 → January 27, 2018

Béatrice Casadesus conjures up the myth of Danaë with “Pluies d’or” (shower of gold). The myth is ancient, indeed, but the artist uses her arsenal to bring it into existence, and not by a literal representation. This approach is reminiscent of the method deployed by Henri-Edmond Cross’s painting “Les Îles d’or” (Orsay Museum, Paris). Painted 120 years earlier, the islands of gold in this work are suggested in Pointillist style with tiny specks of paint. The economy and minutia of these dots echo infinity.

Exhibition view

A poem by Léopardi inspired Béatrice Casadesus to convey this sensation of infinity through her Infinito series, which she began in 2007 and continues to work on today. The colored dots that invade the space create gradations of light that seem to crackle in a myriad of glowing particles. Blues, ruddy golds, and purplish violets structure the large format paintings in diptychs and triptychs, and they set forth like a sensitive expanse.

Béatrice Casadesus uses gold paint either as a base (blown onto the canvas as a fine rain) or poured out from the top to the bottom like tears to heighten the vibration of the entire piece. Splaying dots of color over the canvas, the artist revives Pointillism. She has long been in debt to Georges Seurat whom she rediscovered in the mid 1970s. Her use of blues and golds is reminiscent of quattrocento painters.

Béatrice Casadesus, Nox, 2017 (Exhibition view) Acrylic on linen canvas

The artist’s work also touches an essential never before attempted: distancing from a point, a sort of lightening from the upper to the lower ends of the hue, a dissolution of the punctuation that Beatrice had accustomed us to viewing. Without abandoning her dripping technique, dots slither into a near drip but this metaphor is above all a metamorphosis. Sébastien Gokalp, who has just written a monograph on the work of Béatrice Casadesus, insists on the influence that the Renaissance has had on her work, much like art from the Far East. The art allows us to see several worlds and it is this plurality of worlds that characterizes the work of Béatrice Casadesus.

Exhibition view

All the while preserving its irreducible essence, Béatrice’s painting invites us once again to contemplate a work in constant movement, where nothing is fixed, where a sensation of eternity emanates and washes over the viewer. This exhibition is a follow-up of the 2016 showing at the Galerie Dutko in London. The Royal Academy ranked it among the five best expositions.

Béatrice Casadesus

Béatrice Casadesus lives and works in Malakoff, a Paris suburb. She comes from a family of musicians and actors. From a very early age she knew she wanted to be a painter. Her works now hang in major public and private collections (Centre Pompidou, Manufacture des Gobelins, Musée de Brou, Musée de Soissons, to name but a few).

In addition to the current “Pluies d’Or” exhibition at the Paris Galerie Dutko on Île-Saint-Louis, two other showings are being held in the city of Rambouillet from 16 December 2017 to 4 March 2018 at the Palais du Roi de Rome and at La Lanterne under the title: “Béatrice Casadesus, particules de lumière” (Beatrice Casadesus, light particles).