et la Peinture… ? — Galerie du Jour - Agnès b — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 1 → March 15, 2014

Painting returns to agnès b.’s Galerie du Jour. et la Peinture… ? is a joint exhibition which moves from abstraction to abstract expressionism by way of fantastical figurative art.

The intention of et la Peinture… ? is also to question the importance of showing painting in galeries. After years in which great emphasis was placed on other media, painting now appears to have a new impetus, driven by fresh thinking in the face of its great, sometimes overpowering history.

But it does more than pose a question — the title of this exhibition affirms that painting is now more than ever alive.

Claire Chesnier will reveal her new works, with their elliptical forms and deceptively repetitive body language, following her single exhibition at the Galerie du Jour in 2012 and several months’ residence in Beijing. In less than a year it seems that her inks have flooded the paper in a manner that is less restrained. Her radical use of colour is set within a context of geometrical simplicity.

These clear forms and flat colours are in marked contrast to the expressionist-inspired works of Koyo Hara, drawn from the “versus” series. These new canvases give life to a space for real or imaginary dialogue between two apparently independent parties.

One of Vincent Dulom’s aesthetic preoccupations is with light and its appearance, and the disappearance of a coloured halo. To appreciate this work is to experience time stripped of its initial perspective. For this exhibition, a very large format and a small format confront one another at different stages of the painting.

The question of time is also central to the work of Radenko Milak. From the archive images he has painstakingly gathered together, he paints the portrait of a violent and tormented world. His perfect technique as a watercolourist introduces a paradoxical softness to these scenes of the real world.

With the images and photographs she collects as a preliminary to painting, Claire Tabouret has a natural affinity with Milak. Her sensitive work, representational in appearance, leaves a doubt hovering over the existence of her figures, over her scenes bathed in an unsettling atmosphere. It is work with a nuance, where paint is used to veil reality and to prolong time.

Pippa Blake, is English, from Portsmouth, but a resident of the world. She renders reality abstract by passing it through the filters of different media. Thus she creates imaginary landscapes, with a mixture of pixelised images and traces of armed conflict. The spectator seems plunged into the very substance of the painting in the manner of a microscope that makes only the particles visible.

For the duration of the exhibition, the Galerie du Jour will present a snapshot of contemporary painting, of creativity in movement — of painting which is alive!