Gilgian Gelzer — D’ici là — Jean Fournier Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 16 → November 29, 2014

This exhibition is devoted to recent works of different sizes and highlights this Swiss artist’s affinities with drawing and photography.

Gilgian Gelzer has embarked on a new group of large drawings in series including both elaborate and very pared down compositions. Eight pencil drawings 190 × 140 cm will be on display beneath the skylight, with interesting variations in the type and density of line from one to another. In some the whiteness of the paper is very much in evidence, with an effect of lightness and movement. In others the opposite is the case: the network of lines is intense and close-packed, covering almost the entire sheet. The artist has also experimented with a new gesture suggestive of an impact — as if the lines were coiling around themselves.

In each case the issues of the body and gesture are raised, and accentuated by the sheer size of the works. How does the artist’s body integrate itself into his gestures, and extend itself through them? How do the viewer’s body, and thus his gaze, engage with the work? The intensity and rhythm of the execution and the variable pressure of the artist’s hand help the viewer respond to these works in all their energy and fragility, all their gracefulness and weight.

Also on show will be small and medium format works on paper in which a web of coloured lines generates a profusion of forms and surfaces, with the colour injecting a distinctive luminosity and plasticity.

These works on paper are accompanied by photographs, which for Gilgian Gelzer serve as a form of visual note taking. The principal subjects are architecture, water and the natural world, notably captured through seemingly unremarkable moments. It is when the eye moves from drawing to photograph to another drawing — when it roams freely — that a formal interpretation of the photographs comes into play. The line of a bench or a puddle is transformed into an arabesque, a tree branch into a slab of colour. An object lesson in the endless transcending of reality.

The gallery is also delighted to announce publication of the seventh number of Eric Suchère’s and Camille Saint-Jacques’ Beautés series. Galerie Jean Fournier is now the publisher of the series. This number comes with the added support of the Auvergne Regional Contemporary Art Collection and is devoted in part to the work of Gilgian Gelzer. There will be a signature session at the Galerie on November 8.

This new exhibition and the publication of Beautés are thus a double opportunity to discover aspects of the work of one of today’s major artists.