Semaine 41.16

Anne Laure Sacriste,
Une vision première essayée dans la fleur
Galerie de l’Etrave, Espace d’art contemporain, Thonon-les-Bains

Taken from the title of the work by Odilon Redon, Il y eut peut-être une vision première essayée dans la fleur [There was perhaps a first vision attempted in the flower], a lithography from the collection Les Origines (1883), the title of Anne Laure Sacriste’s exhibition was chosen for several reasons. Her art is required by drawing and, at the very heart of this practice, by the stroke and by the color black. The major use of this color echoes what her elder says, “Black is the most essential color”, adding that it is “the spirit’s agent much more than it is a beautiful color taken from the palette or the prism”. While Redon’s position goes against the flow of his contemporaries, taking all artistic tendencies into account, Sacriste’s choice works in dissent of a period obsessed with quick, easy and flattering images.

The premiere of the 2016-2017 season, the exhibition that the town of Thonon-les-Bains is devoting to Anne Laure Sacriste at the Galerie de l’Etrave is the inauguration of a new cycle articulated around a reflection on “drawing in all its forms”. Due to the fact that it takes its origin from that of design, and no matter what materials it uses, drawing is at the source of all intention to create a work. Having been kept on the fringe for a long time, over the last few years, it has come to the fore as a form of expression in its own right. Over the year, the idea is therefore to highlight the position of drawing within the field of art, over and above the restrictive definition of the word.

Semaine n°407, revue hebdomadaire pour l’art contemporain
Auteur : Philippe Piguet
Published on Friday 14.10.2016

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Semaine 28.16

Marie Anita Gaube, Out of Place
Esox Lucius, Château de Grandvaux, Varennes sous Dun

Placed on the desk of Patrice Ferrari in Esox Lucius office, the card advertising Marie-Anita Gaube’s first exhibition appeared totally clear: exhibit her work. The current exhibition focuses on an ensemble of six paintings, each of which considers, in its own way, a new relation to the subjects. The image, due to its format and its visual presence, must be seen. The call is unique, it is an invitation: we thus open up the painting, we search, we wander. The indefinite which sometimes characterized the portrayal has disappeared. The elements are placed there, before our eyes, we can almost touch them. But we do not fully understand the sense and direction. Our gaze is drawn into continually renewed spaces. It is in this frequently contrasting closeness of “situations” that moments of waiting, escape and the unknown occur. The stakes are double: take the spectator, submit him to the landscape and make sensitive and aesthetic experiences coincide.

Semaine n°405, revue hebdomadaire pour l’art contemporain
Author : Marion Delage de Luget
Published on Friday 15.07.2016

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Semaine 27.16

Bertrand Gadenne, Fragments d’un paysage,
Pile Pont Expo – Espace d’art contemporain, Saint-Gervais les Bains

In the work Bertrand Gadenne has developed since the end of the 1970s, this artist presents photographic and video devices, inviting the visitor to confront luminous paintings, which are both strange and yet still very poetic. The patterns, which are often reminiscent of an animal and vegetal bestiary, are projected onto varied supports – empty shop windows, a monumental building façade, a simple sheet moved by a fan – and they call on the spectator through their mysterious presence, their almost unnoticeable movement, but also their often unreasonable scale. For Saint-Gervais, the artist has captured the geographic framework of the place, situated at the foot of Mont-Blanc and he has created “Fragments d’un paysage”. In this installation, made up of four projections accompanied by an environment of sound, the artist calls on elements taken from the landscape, and relevant to mountain territory – the mountain, forest, animal and waterfall. The visitor, plunged into darkness, is invited to (re)discover to a marked degree, the atypical space that is Pile-Pont Expo. Like an extra, he will more or less participate in the staging that Bertrand Gadenne is trying to set up. Since it is only about projections, nothing exists in this totally immaterial space; but, watched by a majestic stag, perhaps he will nevertheless catch a glimpse of Mont-Blanc? Unless a storm stops him…

Semaine n°404, revue hebdomadaire pour l’art contemporain
Author : Bertrand Gadenne
Published on Friday08.07.2016

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Semaine 25.16

Micromégas,
Boch, Callot, Favier, Limone, Mazabraud, Moninot, Pincemin, Rousseau, Soulhiol, Torres
Galerie de l’Etrave, Espace d’art contemporain, Thonon-les-Bains

The Chapelle de la Visitation’s contemporary art activity has been transfered in the Galerie de l’Etrave, which is located in the Maurice Novarina Theatre. This relocation, which will last for two years, is the consequence of the building work undertaken by the cultural branch of the Visitation, which will have an impact on all the activities that take place there. The town of Thonon therefore asked Philippe Piguet, who has been exhibition curator at the Chapelle de la Visitation since 2008, to imagine a cycle of 4 exhibitions based on a general theme which would act as an echo to the Theatre, a place dedicated to performing arts. Represented by the expression “worlds apart” and illustrated by an ensemble of three monographic exhibitions and one group exhibition, the choice of this theme stems from the feeling that the place evokes with regards to a different space, away from all exterior circulation, hidden within the Theatre. A separate space.

Semaine n°403, revue hebdomadaire pour l’art contemporain
Author : Philippe Piguet.
Published on Friday 24.06.2016

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