Premiers Vertiges - Group show

Overview

For most of the artists in this multidisciplinary group exhibition, coming of age, or the broader sense of transition, has been an opportunity for questioning, a search for identity, and the creation of a new world.

Do you remember your first thrills? The ones of your body, of your mind, of your heart?

Once upon a time, there were seven little girls, the Vivian girls, who, in order to save all the children of the world, had to fight against the grown-ups, the Glandelinians. Created from scratch by the artist Henry Darger, unknown during his lifetime, the epic of the Realms of the Unreal [1] is a fertile source of inspiration for the following generations. It was during an exchange with the painter Marcella Barceló that the fertility of his work once again became apparent to me. The iridescent flowers, giant and artificial, seem to have been sown from the same seeds. The small beings are seemingly protecting a heavy secret, a catastrophe could happen quickly... The hybrid creatures fly and emerge from the floating worlds to the drawings of designer and artist Elizabeth Garouste. Her mirror is a mise en abîme, the reflection is fragmented, what are we really looking at?

By directing the gaze inside ourselves, we can also be prey to dizziness. In the distance, we hear the sounds of the carnival where monsters and anti-heroes are celebrated. Painter Amélie Bigard constructs a fresco of misguided characters where only costumes serve as presentation. The strawberry creature of stylist Charles de Vilmorin blooms from the drawing to the clothing. Sitting in her rocking chair (Bob Wilson’s homage to the artist Clementine Hunter), the headless woman sways while pursuing her reverie.

Facing the bench of designer Olivier Gagnère, the artist Valentin Ranger reveals the genesis of a new utopia. As an ubiquitous god, he declaims «I must take care of the beings lost in the divided bodies, those who need a new history, I am omnisexual [...] Creature, I become monster only in front of certain looks. I only dream of loving.»

Is the body not an arch? It serves as a vessel through which the painter Tal Regev channels and transports energies. It splits up and can, as in the case of Saint Theresa, fall into ecstasy: «I saw in her hand a long golden spear, at the tip of which one would have thought there was a small fire. It seemed to me that one made it enter from time to time in my heart and that it pierced me until the depths of myself... "

The colorful characters are consumed and burnt. The fall of the winged being on this forbidden fruit with curves and solar reflections of photographer Maisie Cousins reminds the tragic myth of Icarus. By getting too close to the sun, the heat melted the wax until his wings finally betrayed him and he died falling in the sea. The waves mix with the blood of Uranus to give birth to the Venuses of painter Ines Longevial. Along their faces flow seminal forces. «Like a phoenix that ignites to be reborn from its ashes, perhaps we are reborn several times from our first adventures. The patchwork of a thousand faces is «like an envelope of memory, of all this inferno of the first and last thrill.»

As long as humans are capable of astonishment, art will exist and I have the naive hope that it can substitute order for chaos and as the philosopher Henri Maldiney evoked «rhythm for thrills.»

Elise Roche est une commissaire d’exposition et conseillère en art contemporain. Depuis 2019, elle est la directrice des projets chez Hervé Mikaeloff où elle se spécialise dans les projets dédiés à la création émergente. Elle a participé à la curation d’expositions variées comme «L’écume des songes » en parallèle de la sélection d’art Paris sur la figuration contemporaine, "Miss Dior" une exposition patrimoniale Dior ou même la participation à la curation de la dernière édition du Noor Festival à Riyadh. En parallèle, elle écrit pour des magazines et des galeries.