Drawing Now Art Fair 12th edition
March 22-25, 2018
Carreau du Temple, Paris
With the Artists :
Gregory Forstner
Natacha Lesueur
Gilles Miquelis
Gérald Panighi
Florian Pugnaire
Ben Vautier
For the twelfth edition of Drawing Now Art Fair, Galerie Eva Vautier presents a selection of works by Gregory Forstner, Natacha Lesueur, Gilles Miquelis, Gérald Panighi, Florian Pugnaire and Ben Vautier.
Eva Vautier, faithful to the guiding line of her gallery opened in 2011, weaves together the possibilities between generations of artists who have marked cultural history since the Nice School, Fluxus, and up to the present day.
If some of them enjoy national or even international recognition, such as Ben Vautier, Gregory Forstner, Natacha Lesueur and Florian Pugnaire, artists such as Gilles Miquelis and Gérald Panighi find here the opportunity to make a wider public discover the relevance of their practices. For several years, the latter have been building up an assertive and established body of work, recognized by the institution and by French collectors.
Thus the “focus” of the stand will be devoted to Gérald Panighi, with a selection of works made between 2000 and 2018. His drawings, oscillating between carefully neglected imagery and small phrases of everyday life, trigger a grating laughter by their assembly. Reminiscent of Glen Baxter’s humor and Magritte’s poetry, they remind us of our own imperfections.
Gilles Miquelis and Gregory Forstner will exhibit recent works dedicated to the classic portraiture exercise, which they interpret to update it.
Gilles Miquelis will exhibit a series of drawings made between 2016 and 2018. Inspired by paintings of the nineteenth century, which the artist reappropriates with great strokes of charcoal, they represent children from the bourgeoisie, who look at us with disdain while smoking cigarettes. With their transgressive irony, the works of Gilles Miquelis mock the paintings once commissioned by the bourgeoisie to symbolize their prosperity.
Gregory Forstner will present portraits made between 2015 and 2018 in which we find his dynamic pictorial gesture: butlers, stewardesses, gentlemen with skulls, pigs or dogs, recurring figures in the artist’s iconographic repertoire, compose here a strange and outdated plastic universe. Most often in large format, the subjects of his drawings are drawn from art history, popular culture, as well as from his personal mythology.
Specifically for Drawing Now, new drawings by Natacha Lesueur and Florian Pugnaire will be presented, allowing us to discover new possibilities for these artists, who are best known for their photographs, sculptures and videos.
Natacha Lesueur thinks of drawing as a declination of her photographic practice: meticulous reworking of her very colorful images, her black and white drawings produce an aporia and focus our attention on the composition alone. Hyper-realistic, his drawings imitate in some way photography, while opening new perspectives: upsetting the closed enclosure of the photographic frame and thus proposing unfinished representations.
Florian Pugnaire’s post-industrial sculptural and videographic universe takes the form of drawings made with fire, using imagery from his films: devastated construction sites, crashed cars… Dynamic and sometimes violent, his drawings bear witness to his work process, which is based above all on gesture and experience.
Finally, Ben Vautier will exhibit rare and historical drawings made between 1958 and 1979. We find the proclamatory and subversive tone of this emblematic artist of the School of Nice but we also discover more intimist, sensitive and poetic works.
The Eva Vautier Gallery presents for the Master Now exhibition a historical drawing by Ben Vautier, Banana, made in 1958.
The Galerie Eva Vautier, faithful to its guiding line, has been weaving since its opening in 2011, possibilities between generations of artists that have stood out in cultural history from Fluxus to these days.
If some of them enjoy a national and even international recognition, such as Ben, Gregory Forstner, Natacha Lesueur and Florian Pugnaire, artists like Gilles Miquelis and Gérald Panighi find here the opportunity to have a wider audience discover the relevance of their practices. The latter have been constructing an assertive and established body of works, recognized by the institution and French collectors.
Thus, the “focus” of the stall will be devoted to Gérald Panighi, with a selection of works made between 2000 and 2017. Gilles Miquelis and Gregory Forstner will show recent works dedicated to the exercise of the portrait they interpret to bring it put to date.
For the occasion, some surprising proposals, made specifically for Drawing Now, new drawings by Natacha Lesueur and by Florian Pugnaire, will be presented for the first time, introducing new possibilities for these artists mostly known for their photographs, their sculptures and their videos.
Also presented, some rare and historical drawings by Ben Vautier, made between 1958 and 1979. Really bearing witness to the works of this major artist.
Gérald Panighi, I found you, 2017
Oil painting, graphite and linseed oil on paper, 75 x 57.5 cm
