Duo exhibition with recent works by Laure Carré and Kees van de Wal
September 26th to October 9th 2024
Opening
Thursday, September 26th, 6pm – 9pm
Amelie Maison d’Art, 18 rue Séguier, 75006 Paris
Kees van de Wal
What do Kees Van de Wal’s shapes actually mean ? Nothing in particular and everything at the same time. Indeterminate, deliberately irrelevant, they go together, minimal and cheerful, whether large or small, square or vague, full or empty. For their ingenuous contours have the honesty of scribbles, of drawings with no purpose, made at a young age. Remembering his childhood sketches, Kees Van de Wal cuts instinctively into the brown of packing cartons. These mille-feuilles of paper have contained many things and have been passed from hand to hand. Worn out by their previous life, they take on discreet colours, also recycled. Celadon, bubble-gum, mint or café crème, the range remains calm, faithful to that point of balance that imposes silence, like the horizon. Kees’ “tranquil landscapes”, atmospheric impressions painted on canvas, were already about motionless lines. By changing his medium, Kees Van de Wal modifies his relationship with space: layer after layer, the surface becomes thicker, until the plane becomes a volume, a “2.5-dimensional” object to be viewed from an angle. Alkyd produces a similar effect: similar to vinyl or lacquer, it gives a poor material new perspectives.
Virginie Huet, July 2024
Laura Carré
Laure Carré’s painting comes from within. From the belly, to be precise. In other words, from the seat of the soul, reflecting its states. You have to keep this in mind when you look at her small and large formats, populated by dogs and wild horses, cowboys and unisex boxers, high mountains and low skies. Nature and its species rest in peace, echoes of landscapes and creatures encountered in dreams or in real life, in American parks, the Lofoten Islands, Brittany or Tenerife. Dreams are also journeys, and Laure Carré gives equal importance to morning thoughts and distant memories. Passed through the sieve of memory, images emerge in bits and pieces in oil, acrylic, ink or chalk, on canvas or tracing paper, escaping from a compound past whose traces are visible. In her Nantes studio, which once housed former stables, Laure Carré sands, scrapes, tears and conducts investigations, sometimes reopened after months of waiting. Her bold style is reminiscent of Georg Baselitz, and her body fragments – mainly hands – of Egon Schiele. Each painting, each collage is an unsolved mystery. Between sleep and death, earth and beyond, ghosts pass in transit, harmless and free.
