Les apparences, 50 peintres contemporains de la scène française

"Les apparences", 50 contemporary painters of the French scene

A proposal by Thomas Lévy-Lasne

An exhibition associated with FILAF (International Festival of Art Books and Film) from June 21 to 27, 2021.

This exhibition is first of all the occasion to concretize a situation: the extraordinary vitality of the contemporary French painting scene.

Non-exhaustive, I have chosen to present painters who keep the world of appearances as a reference. In a great variety of theme, style and ambition, all these painters question the real with this so particular medium which plays with the materials of the visible: pigments, surfaces, the sculptural side of the painting.

Of painter says abstract like Jean-Baptiste Bernardet or Claire Chesnier, being interested however in the luminous spectrum in an in-between disturbing as in Maude Maris or Eugène Leroy, of an iconographic figuration in the Eric Corne or Françoise Petrovitch to the mute realism of Mireille Blanc or Grégory Derenne, from a very assertive way like Eva Nielsen or Mathieu Cherkit to the erasure of the presence of the painter like Damien Cadio or Katia Bourdarel, from the elegance of the effective style of Gilles Aillaud or Jean-Philippe Delhomme to the fragile touch of Nathanëlle Herbelin or Jérémy Liron, the common inspiration remains the silent world which is ours to paraphrase Francis Ponge.

A generation between 35 and 45 years old is particularly highlighted in the exhibition: they were discouraged in art school but these many artists have persevered in their patient practice in the midst of an era of avalanche of images. 100 million photos and videos are posted on Instagram per day. While we could talk about the return of painting, it has discovered older generations, there have always been painters and now a younger generation: the medium takes an exponential place in schools today.

With an assumed look towards Art History, a technical interest for the touch and the surface qualities, a certain coldness in the representation, the variety of the painters of the exhibition is found in their confidence in the medium that is the painting: this immemorial need to represent the unspeakable of appearances by the presence of a painting.

Thomas Lévy-Lasne

From June 21 to September 12
à cent mètres du center du monde / Centre d'Art Contemporain
3 avenue de Grande Bretagne 66000 Perpignan

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