Thomas Lévy-Lasne — Les Églises, Chelles
The art center Les Églises de Chelles is hosting a solo exhibition by artist Thomas Lévy-Lasne, titled La fin du banal (The End of the Ordinary), showcasing a selection of paintings created over the past twenty years. This sumptuous setting is a perfect backdrop for paintings that are as rich as they are humble in their subjects.
Thomas Lévy-Lasne — La fin du banal @ Les églises centre d'art de Chelles from September 14 to November 17. Learn more The first room of the exhibition, with its precise and well-paced arrangement, is a true success. It brings the viewer into direct confrontation with the artwork while allowing the space’s volumes and light to breathe, reflecting a metaphorical image of itself—both spectacular and stripped down, as technically ambitious as it is openly welcoming.
It’s an encounter one might not have expected, and it leaves its mark through its clarity. “La fin du banal”, beyond the many interpretations that such a title allows—ranging from the crisis of the everyday to questioning its very reason for being—offers a chance to appreciate this direct practice, contrary to any laborious celebration of technique. It even challenges the technique by unveiling a colossal body of work that does not hide its imperfections. Volumes might dissolve under pronounced contrasts, shortcuts may no longer be concealed, and faces may veer towards illustration; the unequal and the unmatched share the same energy. The canvases live in the space, and whether they slightly waver is irrelevant—the goal is to maintain the rhythm, to confront humanity, the approximate, and the intimate. From disaster to blindness. Every image is a subject because, in the end, it is the practice itself that is central, fixing in a ruptured temporality what is already broken—our own. To contemplate the “end of the ordinary” is to admit that everything is in crisis, everything is grave.
Grave and important, without being solemn or moralistic. Much like the artist’s recent projects, which, through his personal momentum and his involvement with his peers (notably organizing the event Le jour des peintres (The Day of the Painters), where 80 painters were recently invited to the heart of the Musée d’Orsay), reflect an urgency of creation, an ode to the diversity of executions. From large canvases to smaller formats, different durations and methods collide; snapshots of evenings, details, and artifacts become hours of methodical work, and the familiar is sketched in broad strokes, transformed into the languor of shared lives. Moments of intimacy engage with public spaces, and we navigate through the catalog of a life, as though stumbling upon moments of pause and attention. Yet in this confrontation, in their dialogue, strong tendencies emerge in the composition of images where contrasts outweigh subjects that clash with their surroundings.
This evolution can be read in the exhibition’s chronological arrangement, which traces a journey from fleeting, dramatic moments to a daily banality that becomes a vestige carrying within it the tragedy of a world in extinction.
The absurd and irony, which could have turned into symbolic cynicism, instead walk a fine line in these works, and reflect, if not with laughter, at least with a slightly skewed gaze, on disaster. The catastrophe is underway; it will always be urgent and it’s already useful to materialize it.
