Erwan BALLAN - Olivier FILIPPI - Nicolas GUIET - Rémy HYSBERGUE - Laurence PAPOUIN - Les Braves (1)

Press release

Galerie Richard brings together five French artists: Erwan Ballan, Olivier Filippi, Nicolas Guiet, Remy Hysbergue, Laurence Papouin from November 26 to December 23, 2011 in an exhibition entitled Les Braves.

“Erwan Ballan pursues a deconstruction of the painting, initiated in the 1960s by Support/surface artists. It adopts a post-modern attitude. References are everywhere, from Pollock’s line arrays to Mondrian’s orthogonal grids: a Pollock that would have become chewing gum and a Mondrian whose grids would translate into life-size metal angles. Put at a distance, painting is sifted through ready-made and rock-and-roll. With him, parody never takes the form of a quotational plunder that would replay all the givens of painting. From the observation of matter in the state of stains (paint) and things (silicone threads), he invents narratives in which the distribution of forms is done by layers, by bursts. Gradually, the material hardens, the color takes on, organizing itself into a network that is both tied and untied, organized and teeming. »Marion Daniel, catalog of the exhibition « It Takes two to tango » at Espace Camille Lambert.

“(…). Olivier Filippi’s paintings activate, secondly, a scrutinizing gaze, a gaze of discernment (…). Abstract without renouncing evocation, assuming dexterity in painting and drawing without yielding to virtuoso prowess, using the effect of color alone without limiting them to strict monochrome, indicating mastery of illusionist effects without abusing them, displaying a perfect awareness of the format and specificity of the pictorial field, concerned with the body – that of the painter, that of the spectator – and with architecture, citing in turn gestural and geometric painting, not ignoring technological imagery and its distribution media, or even the swoosh efficiency of commercial aesthetics, Olivier Filippi’s painting is synthetic. It is an accomplished state of neutrality and balance by addition, dosage and combination of pictorial possibilities. It is painting and the image of ideal painting in its emerging context. » Alexandre Bohn, April 2011

“(…). The works of Nicolas Guiet extend the notion of painting towards that of a volume occupying space. He thus creates from a canvas and a frame (meaning a structure intended to maintain the elements of a surface) abstract or non-figurative volumes with strong colored charges which adhere to the architecture of the place by taking support on angles linked to walls, floors and ceilings. The forms are indefinable (also their titles refer to blind keystrokes on a keyboard made by a third party, a kind of distancing from the initial referent), even if the interpretative field is activated from the outset. Each work is born from a matrix produced in small format which will take shape in a magnitude that goes beyond the scale of the body. These works summon a space in between where the perception of opposites finds expression as well: the soft and the hard, the formed and the formless, the dynamic and the static, the convex spaces and the concave spaces. . » Elodie Rahard

“He is one of the only painters today who bring invention to abstraction. Rémy Hysbergue, French, 42 years old, introduces into known pictorial practices viruses that pervert them. His monochromes are not really monochrome, his gestures are not necessarily expressive and the references that can be found here and there should not be taken at face value. This art of hybridizations, mutations and reversals gives rise to paintings with visual and even tactile effects as surprising as they are seductive. »Philippe Dagen

“Laurence PAPOUIN’s “canvases” are the emblem of the ambiguity of things. Canvas designates both a material that is suitable for painting but also for making objects for domestic use such as an oilcloth tablecloth or a tea towel. Since the modernist adventure and the historical avant-gardes, there has been a constant passage between the arts and those “so-called” decorative; between the system of art and that of production. We wear sweaters and use Mondrian towels. We find pop’art on placemats and bath towels. Laurence PAPOUIN with his “canvases/towels” operates a return from the object to the work but in such a way that the latter is as if haunted by the former, on the edge of its absorption by the object. Paradoxically, his “canvases” are made up of what is the medium par excellence, pictorial modernity: acrylic, which is nothing more than a plastic material. Their rectangular format evokes well on the painting; but the method of fixation and the weight of the painting itself pull them back towards the object. Here, then, is an abstract painting that flirts with trompe-l’oeil and “realistically” embodies the experience