The Galerie Eva Vautier is pleased to present the exhibition by Natacha Lesueur, Plus jamais de cheveux collants (même par temps humide), echoing her…
The Galerie Eva Vautier is pleased to present the exhibition by Natacha Lesueur, Plus jamais de cheveux collants (même par temps humide), echoing her retrospective at the Villa Medici (Rome), Comme un chien qui danse. Natacha Lesueur invents unprecedented images. Their singularity rests on the strangeness that inhabits them. The faces and bodies she depicts are almost always those of female models. Through various processes, she subverts her characters and portraits by introducing chimeras. Their plastic force places them at the confluence of painting, sculpture and performance. Exhibition views, Natacha Lesueur, Plus jamais de cheveux collants (même par temps humide), 2022 © Photos François Fernandez In the exhibition Plus jamais de cheveux collants (même par temps humide), the artist develops her research on the representation of the female body by juxtaposing two series: Empreintes (1994-1996) and Les humeurs des fées (2020). Between 1994 and 1996, in resistance to a vast system of model images, deconstructing coded appearances and ideal femininities, Natacha Lesueur marks her models with prints of childlike motifs. The process of reappropriating female nudity passes through fragmentation, a cutting up of bodies, thus opening onto visibility while avoiding objectifying them. In 2020, the artist returns to her photographs in graphite pencil. Reacting to the abundance of female faces and of their printed, posted and digital images, she offers a grisaille vision of faded brides, somewhere between sketch and ghostly apparition. Drawing thus opens a timeless dimension to the image of the bride and invites us to explore the complex and powerful identity of this feminine archetype. The dialogue presented between Natacha Lesueur’s works of the 1990s and her most recent ones develops her constantly updated study of feminine identity, appearance, adornment and the relationship to the intimate. Video. On the gallery’s upper floor, Natacha Lesueur invites Louise Fauroux, Jean-Baptiste Georjon, Alisson Schmitt, and Margot Sparkes. Five videos, witnesses to the ills of our society: between digital immortality, transhumanism and the injunction to appearance, this fourfold gaze appropriates new technologies to deliver its visions. The presentation of these works is made possible thanks to the loan from the FRAC Poitou-Charentes. MÉLANCOLIE DES FÉES. Christian Bernard, 27 August 2021. “A tall, beautiful and distinguished young lady, dressed in a silk fabric as white as snow1” This image presents itself as a portrait. But a portrait of whom, a portrait of what? As soon as the gaze grasps it, it becomes clear that what it would be a portrait of is not some particular person, recognisable, identifiable, nameable on a wall label. It is not an image whose purpose is to represent someone. Without being the portrait of anyone, it is the image of a model. In other words, a person represented without being made into a portrait, without seeking to delineate their…
