Art Paris 2024

For this edition of Art Paris 2024, we will be showcasing the work of Philippe Favier. Selected by Eric de Chassey as part of his "Fragile Utopias" programme at the fair, the works will take centre stage on our stand. Since its beginnings in the early 1980s, Philippe Favier's work has been marked by the question of utopia and heteropia: he never ceases to create, on scales ranging from the minuscule to the monumental, worlds that don't exist but could or should, and worlds that exist only elsewhere (i.e. in his works and in our imagination when we look at them or remember them), and are often partially removed from direct apprehension. This abundant creation, which has never ceased to be so, always proceeds with tenderness and humour, seemingly harmless even when the subject matter is grating or even funereal, drawing us in sentimentally to show us little by little, without ever being certain, that utopia or heterotopia are our condition. Dried rose petals set under glass, isolated like an island or multiplied like an archipelago, placed in pollen frames, are the only elements that make up the small, fragile worlds, particularly refined and elegiac, of the works in the 'Rose cousin' series, from 2011, with the enamel in which they are set, "a line of paint two millimetres wide encircling the edge". Art Paris will also be an opportunity to reveal her latest creations, "Réveillez vo' cueurs endormis".

With an equally complex universe, Lionel Sabatté returns with his new creations on paper. Centred around his Poussièrographies, photographic works revealed through dust, Lionel Sabatté conjures up previously unseen images of undergrowth, punctuated by trunks and the complex thicket of canopy and undergrowth. Through his committed gesture of revelation using dust and gold pigments, Lionel Sabatté questions the mysterious element that surrounds every photographic representation. At once an explicit image of a factual place and a surface streaked with matter or luminous colours, these creations ultimately question the very essence of painting.

The Chevalme sisters' drawing work tackles the topicality of history, and the complex relationship we have with the colonial past. Using photographs of everyday scenes taken by colonialists in Africa at the end of the 19th century, the sisters reveal the unthinking nature of these images. By faithfully reproducing these ordinary photographs in Indian ink, bearing witness to the subjugation of peoples by a conquering Europe, they question the power of the image in our contemporary societies and the way in which a banal scene in the 19th century is revealed a century later to be totally unbearable. But to avoid denouncing them too quickly and easily, they superimpose a second drawing, this time made with gold flakes. This second drawing shows fragments of everyday life in Africa today, with street vendors, young adults on scooters, women leaving for the market... This tension between the past and the present in cultures that are open to the world raises questions about how each culture can overcome the weight of its past to project itself into a promising future. This pair's extraordinary mastery of line results in works of rare relevance to the question of how we look at other cultures.

Trained as an artist and photographer, Gilles Pourtier continues to deconstruct the language of art. For Art Paris, he specifically produced two marble sculptures in the shape of the concrete weights used in washing machines to ensure their stability. Standing upright on pedestals, these semi-abstract forms suddenly become a kind of primitive mask, evoking the way we look at African art of the past. Through this gesture of removal and diversion, he reaffirms the power of the imagination, capable of turning an ordinary form into a marvellous fetish object capable of dialoguing with the gods and a form of immanence.

Bernar Venet, a great name in the history of art, is present on the stand with a group of original sculptures: Arcs and Effondrement d'Arcs, among the latest limited-edition pieces available from the artist's studio.

Finally, Vera Molnár's latest artist's book, based on the motif of the cross, is presented. 100 drawings produced over the course of 2023, like so many typologies of her methods, her programmatic variations, her way of incorporating chance into her creation. These crosses, which have suddenly become a way of playing with shapes, colours and patterns, are now brought to life in a sumptuous artist's book, 100 Croix, which sums up the career of this pioneer in the relationship between art and computers. .