Yann Stéphane Bisso — Les nuées sont des vagabonds qui dérivent — Exo exo — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Ends in 7 days: October 9 → December 6, 2025

The first painting by Yann that I loved depicted a flock of black birds on a blue sky dotted with clouds.

It was called Autobahn (2024), meaning “highway” in German, and was like an open door onto the tight, clustered flight of the migratory birds that inhabited it. The sky is a central element in Yann’s compositions. His landscape formats serve this purpose well. They are filled with aberrations and irreverence, turmoil and incandescent suns. The sky is a window upon dreams and other worlds. Days set there, divinities hide there, and great journeys take place there. Symbols fit together like pieces of a story.

“Les nuées sont des vagabonds qui dérivent”. On the phone, Yann tells me about the title of his exhibition, weighing each word carefully. The “nuées” are groups of birds. They come first because they represent the collective migratory adventure rather than the isolated journey of an individual. They are nonetheless “vagabonds” (wanderers), anonymous or fleeting figures onto which we project our fantasies or shared ideas without knowing it. In the end, we see what we want to see. And ultimately, they drift. Drifting is at the heart of Yann’s work. It is poetic. It speaks of chance and randomness.

“Look, spring is coming,” we often say when we see a formation of birds passing in the sky. It is the advent, the imminence. Towards more heat, more cold. What interests Yann in painting is precisely that moment of storm when the bird dives, bodies rise, clouds form. Where they come from, where they are going, we do not know.

Yann’s paintings speak to us of this threshold. These paintings are less windows than passages. There is a before and an after. Many elements or incarnations cast their shadows there, like traces fixed by light, absences or holes in history. His painting is therefore inhabited by swarms of ghosts. I see them moving, rejoicing, and also conversing. They live initiatory adventures, stories of love, eroticism, inheritance, or fantastical creatures. They embody ancestors. They vow to pass on their legacy.

Elisa Rigoulet, octobre 2025