artist  statements

Claude BERNARDON

 PHOTOGRAPHY

« Nothing can exist without its mystery » Magritte

Photography, the most banal thing on earth ?

To shake off this idea, reinforced by the fact that everybody takes photos, I like to photograph what people can see but don't look at. I aim to make people ask questions, to show real things without showing reality.

Strolling in town I photograph : half-open doors, a perspective down a corridor, a tree standing out against a red wall, refracted colours seen in mirrors.

The composition of my images is of the greatest importance to me. Work in black and white, always in strong contrast, allows me to play with light and shadow, deepening further the mystery of the image.

I am self-trained and live in Pau . I have exhibited for several years, mainly in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region.

Serge GRIGGIO

PAINTING

Serge Griggio initially explores his subject in all its physicality, its most figurative form.

For each cycle the theme is different, the point of departure being a simple object – armchair, prayer-bench, stool, bottle – with its own volumes and lines as a basis for work.

The painterly, intellectual and philosophical aspects emerge in time, in their own time, taking form unpredictably, integrating the unknown and the unexpected. This is what makes the work unique.

It is an in-depth process, exploring and elaborating on light, line, matter, and movement, ink drawing and varied techniques revealing a new poetry of form.

Pauline JURQUET

CERAMIC SCULPTURE

Discovering painting was my first approach to art. Watercolour in particular gave me a distinct way of perceiving light. From there I gravitated naturally to training in ceramic decoration, then in sculptural forms.

In the world of ceramics I found an intimate connection between matter and my own body.The malleability of clay and its different textures heighten the sense of touch, of living matter, and then I feel as if I am in the presence of another « body ».

For many years now I have been interested in the contrasts of different materials (earthenware/porcelain-glazed/unglazed textures) and their combinations.

My forms are simple, slightly unsymmetrical, and grounded, searching for an equilibrium between stability and tension.

Geneviève BOUSSOUAR

PAINTING ENGRAVING

Geneviève Boussouar finds inspiration in her surroundings and in nature. She records and translates her perceptions without aiming to reproduce exactly a particular form or landscape.

The whole process is a constant dialogue between technical mastery and instinctve spontaneity, leaving room for the unexpected. The epiderm of the canvas gradually acquires strata, becomes stone, leather or metal, imprisoning traces of every step of the procedure . Her painting gives visible form to the ineffable, to what can only be felt and experienced.

Geneviève widens her field of exploration with engraving. Her prints mix collage techniques and dry-point etching. The grain of the paper becomes a terrain to cross, where we glimpse territories of silence, flashes of sky, whisperings...

At the limit of abstraction, each work is an invitation to conjure up our own sensory landscape.     

Françoise HOFFMANN    Maître d'Art

TEXTILE - PHOTOGRAPHY

 As a visual artist my work has centred on felt fibre, a material whose creative potential has fascinated me for thirty years. Its millenia-long history and its use in many parts of the world have led me on trails which have provided me with sources of inspiration.

On my travels I have established a dialogue between photography and woollen fibre. Capturing these moments of strong colours, vibrations and emotions is intimately linked to the slow and patient manual task of elaborating a painterly texture, original and reversible. I have always been fascinated by what is behind the scenes.

A sharp eye and manual dexterity thus create an original aesthetic of vibrating contours.

From photographs of an abandoned factory or of industrial felt, from the Ardennes to the high plateaux of Sichuan, from the arid plains of Inner Mongolia to the lights of Hong Kong, from the banks of the Loire to the banks of the Jinze, there emerge interpretations which can be read in endless ways.            

 Cécile AUREJAC

CERAMIC SCULPTURE

Cécile models symbolic animals in earthenware using a hollowing-out technique . Certain decorative elements (eyes, antlers, horns, feathers) are modelled in earthenware clay or porcelain and fired at high temperatures, to be incorporated at the final stage of modelling.

Textured, engraved, crackeled, the pieces then receive a clay slip or pure oxides to achieve natural colours. After a first biscuit firing, certain pieces are glazed using the technique known as « naked raku » with a sacrificial glaze, then fired in a gas kiln , then smoked out while hot. Others are fired in saggers in a wood-fired kiln.

Why the animal theme ? Perhaps to remind us that formerly we humans viewed our wild « cousins » differently : with respect, goodwill, the fraternity of living things... All that we should bring back to the world, allowing us to imagine a less disenchanted tomorrow.

Isabelle BOURZAT

PAINTING

“If we opened people up, we would find landscapes.”    Agnès Varda

Water, earth and stone are at the heart of my painting.

Duality, effusion, muddy alliance, tearing apart, fertile complicity, fragile and tenuous boundaries.

Earth, ash, pigments and collages mingled with acrylic, layering the canvas, adding to and deepening its history. Fragments, materials, shreds; a stratified world.

A possible landscape can be glimpsed in the canvas. It is nourished not so much by a memory as by the sensation experienced, what remains of it, what rubs against the intimate with its smiles and its tears. A sensory landscape.

 Working with the canvas by disrupting reference points and bringing forth the layers from within, from below, from afar, to draw up my emotional map.

Guillaume RIVIERE

PHOTOGRAPHY

The Hunt

“I remember it very clearly; the first image of this series was that of a chair in a hotel bedroom in the Pyrenees… in 2015.

Then in Arles I took another shot, of a woman wearing a large panther t-shirt. On the same day, I saw two others, including a woman with a pair of leopard-print shoes. Without knowing it, I had just embarked on a long hunt.

At first, I found this strange, even vulgar, in bad taste. But very quickly, my eye became sharper, and every day, I came across new incredible specimens, proudly displaying their fur pattern like a trophy. From a baby’s sleepsuit to an old lady’s handbag, from frames of glasses to swimming costumes, to high heeled shoes, the hunt became endless. The more I photographed panthers in the town, the more I realised that they were everywhere, in the working-class neighbourhoods as well as the posh neighbourhoods, on the market stalls as well as in the windows of luxury boutiques…”

Rozenn ALAPETITE

MATERIAL ARTIST

From traditional mosaic towards a unique artistic expression

For 27 years, in her studio, Rozenn Alapetite has created decorative objects, paintings, freestanding sculptures and wall art, by marrying together glass, cement and slate.

She works with surface effects in the cement and sometimes includes small pieces of cut glass or slate. The play of light brings her works to life, making the surfaces vibrate and creating a strong volcanic-looking material.

For the past 15 years she has divided her time between exhibitions, decorative projects and training.

Today, she creates collections aimed at interior design influencers, and also carries out bespoke commissions.

Céline FAVAREL

PAPER ARTIST

Celine Favarel makes paper her preferred medium of expression, creating works which are situated on the border between figurative and the abstract. Thanks to its delicacy and fragility, she composes pieces where her free, sensory and emotional gaze on the discreet beauty of the world is reinvented. She constantly seeks a subtle balance between perfection and imperfection, between apparent simplicity and the complexity of forms.

From her studio in the Tarn-et-Garonne, the artist soaks up the rhythm of nature; the inexhaustible source of her inspiration. She burns, perforates, tears or sculpts the paper, transforming it into vibrant materials which tend sometimes towards bas-relief. In her most recent creations, the notion of symbiosis has become central: she explores here the links which unite these visible and invisible worlds, these essential forces on which our existence rests and on which we profoundly depend.

Nathalie HUON

VISUAL ARTIST

After it has delivered its messages, a book, whether read once or a thousand times, is not thrown away: it is passed on or transformed.

Nathalie Huon loves books to the point of intoxication.

The suppleness of the pages, the scent of the ink, the silky feel of the cover all inspire her.

She does as she pleases with them.

She cares for them, wraps them into spirals or compresses them so that they keep their secrets. She transforms them into astonishing objects, paintings and sculptures.

Nathalie’s work is, as JC Pellerin says, "a whole fragile and powerful universe that connects us to the passing of time, to its effects on objects and on ourselves."