Nicolas Guiet, Jane Harris, Pierre Mabille, Florindo Nanni, Olivier Soulerin — Géométriquement douce — Jean Fournier Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 27 → June 3, 2017

Galerie Jean Fournier is presenting the exhibition Géométriquement douce/Geometrically Sweet as part of the programme of thematic group shows initiated in 2013. Curated by Emilie Ovaere-Corthay and Pierre Mabille, the exhibition brings together artists from the gallery — Nicolas Guiet (b. 1976) and Pierre Mabille (b. 1958) — and three guests: Jane Harris (b. 1956), Florindo Nanni (b. 1952) and Olivier Soulerin (b. 1973).

Since the 1950s abstract art’s typologies have been encapsulated in adjectives evocative of “sensations”: cool, hot or lyrical. These varying definitions have their roots in artists’ use of colour: outlining or mixing, controlled or spontaneous brushwork. In this respect the “historic” Galerie Jean Fournier artists of past decades have always pointed down singular paths unrelated to schools and dogma. Today the boundaries between these territories are porous and vigorously challenged, but we are witnessing the emergence of a different kind of geometry, on the borders between numerous poetically sweet forms of expression. The exhibition’s title, inspired by that of Michelangelo Antonioni’s unmade film Technically Sweet (1966), both suggests a relationship between two seemingly discrete registers and reveals a double-edged concept: drawing on the formal universality of geometry while at the same time regenerating it with colour and very simple processes of repetition, superposition and juxtaposition.

Borrowing from the copious catalogue of geometrical forms, the five artists making up this exhibition show a preference for curved and undulating families whose indirect geometry can be triggered and enriched by colour. They deploy colour generously, using transparency, modulation and variations of resonance in ranges extending from the pastel to the muted.

The particularity of execution of Jane Harris’s pictures lies in the use of iridescent paint modulated by the angle of her brush. The result is a "shot" — and sometimes deliberately clashing — colour effect that generates abstract forms whose curves are multiplied by suppleness of gesture and a play on formal alliterations and false symmetry. This dialogue with light is also found in the translucent veils of Florindo Nanni and their revelation of formal structure through an intangible screen of coloured light. Juxtaposed tracings give rise to iridescent tints and a softening of forms.

In Pierre Mabille’s recent woodcuts and pictures the spindle figure that has become his signature is set into an intermediate shape that ensures the connection between the rectangular image-support and the curves of the motif. No outlining here, and no line: only the veins in the wood imperceptibly modulate the colour. This sensory interplay recurs in Olivier Soulerin’s pictures, whose base material is fabric printed with lines and grid patterns. The artist throws the initial grids out of kilter by covering them over and adding coloured motifs, creating optical effects that alter our perception.

Last but not least, Nicolas Guiet counterpoints these offerings with a series of new digital drawings. Best known for his “volume pictures”, the artist is seen here broaching the issue of drawing for the first time, using colours as strong and highly contrasted as ever to create a formally visionary world in which an emergent geometry is addressed as both a project and an imaginative domain. We rediscover here the curves and countercurves of his three-dimensional work, together with effects of texture and light that endow his compositions with a relish and a weirdness all their own. These one-off prints were created in association with the Franck Bordas workshop in Paris.