Vera Molnar / Cent (ou mille) façons de faire

For several months now, Vera Molnar has been drawing and imagining "a thousand" variations, a thousand ways of doing things, a thousand kinds of constructions and deconstructions, exploring the possibilities of figuring crosses through a free play of lines and intersections. All kinds of crosses! 

"100 crosses" to mark her 100th birthday, "100 crosses" as a way of revisiting her practice with a sense of humour, "100 crosses" destined to form a unique ensemble covering the wall of Galerie 8 + 4. 

These hand-drawn sketches on small sheets of paper reflect an insatiable need to rediscover the joy she felt every morning since the 1970s, when she recorded in her notebooks, or diaries, the ideas that would later give rise to her creations. Bequeathed to the Centre Pompidou in 2022, she missed these notebooks, which were a constant source of inspiration...

This work of investigating a motif, obviously marked by various symbolism, was conceived as a large installation that allows us to see the intuitions she has had on a daily basis thanks to the tools that are POSCA or the coloured felt-tips brought in by her assistants. So there's black, grey, but also flamboyant yellows.... And as usual, there are "programmes" that she imposes on herself, the idea also of order, disorder from a simple motif that finds its validity through the simple intersection of two lines. So there are lines, but also grids, screens, simple strokes and flat areas, all of which intermingle and intersect... 

This impressive group of works will resonate in the gallery's new space (13, rue d'Alexandrie) with other creations based on the same inexhaustible theme of crosses, but this time in acrylic on canvas, drawings on tracing paper, collages or silkscreen. And there's even an artist's book (30 copies) specially published for the occasion, featuring 100 of his hand drawings, digitally modelled. A thousand ways of doing things! 

Vera Molnar was also keen to present a number of older drawings from the 1950s and 1970s. They will enable collectors to understand the way in which her practice works, by aggregating questions about what the human can do and what the machine can do. Far from being in competition with each other, for Vera Molnar the human and the machine are entities in constant dialogue, each endowed with weaknesses as well as qualities. While the laws of chance play an essential role in Vera Molnar's work, as the junction between the human mind and the calculating power of computers, it is also a way of summoning up the vagaries of a rigour that is always placed under the sign of the imaginary.