Galleries in Paris

PHILIPPE GAREL – HERVÉ HEUZÉ

Hervé Heuzé invites Philippe Garel for a duo exhibition at Galerie Richard in Paris, from December 12^th 2015 to February 27^th 2016. These artists will exhibit together for the first time, and it is also the first exhibition of Philippe Garel at Galerie Richard. Born in Rouen in 1964, Hervé Heuzé is a painter who studied at the Rouen Regional School of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1988. He always knew that he would become a painter, and he appreciated the teachings of Philippe Garel, born in 1945. Garel was the only professor who taught painting there and encouraged students through their vocation as painters. These two artists have worked on a few series with various subjects, and their works are both recognized by their particular talent in presenting light in painting.

Philippe Garel is not only a painter, but also a sculptor, (statue of Léon Blum, Léon Blum square in Paris, bust in bronze of Monet, Paré, Laennec, Hippocrate and Paster in Rouen) and a designer-decorator (exhibition Bon usage du faux at Cognacq-Jay Museum). Like Neo Rauch in Germany, he magnifies all subjects represented through his remarkable skills and brings us true pleasure in his painting. Paraphrasing the critique of Gregory Volk in his article about Neo Rauch in « Art in America » (June 2010), the paintings of Garel seem oddly trans-temporal to the point that a single work might suggest simultaneously France of today and past decades, of the romantic 19^th century, the beautiful painting of the age of Rembrandt, the dark paintings of the Middle Ages, and the science-fiction of the future. Garel seems to understand that the periods France and Europe encounter are just only moments among others. They correlate with each other endlessly over time, in the cycle of strengthening and weakening, of creation and destruction (paintings and sculptures of mushroom clouds). Touches of irony and humor in his art, which put all subjects on the same level within his paintings, are certainly manifestations of his modesty as well as demonstration of his remarkable talent as a painter, pastellist, and sculptor. « Philippe Garel is a multifaceted artist: painter and pastellist with prestigious skills, sculptor with immoderate fantasy. He has always represented particular worlds for each of his major themes, reinventing Africa, visiting Rembrandt’s studio or paying homage to his peers, the great classics of the history of art. Beyond his virtuosity, he shows the vision of a world dominated by whom contributes to the essence of art, an assertive concept of beauty, but never without humor or irony » (Alin Avila, art critic).

The exhibition is focused on his paintings and works on paper. It also concentrates on bringing the works throughout several periods together, distinguished by the importance of the representation of light.

In 2003, Hervé Heuzé exhibited oil paintings of snowy landscapes of the Mont Blanc by bringing bright lights from within. In 2006 he began a series entitled Abîmes of acrylic sprayed paintings of an underwater world in deep blue color. In 2012 he explored the filtering of color through fabrics placed in front of canvas. His exhibition Attente in 2013 showed a resurgence of human beings in the form of young women posing on a blue landscape of ruins. Today he amazes us with paintings which approach various issues between humans and animals. The considerable advances in medical science, whether genetic or surgical, open the imagination to all kinds of combinations of hybrid beings, half human – half animal. As an artist-painter, it brought him back to the representations of divinities in mythologies, especially those of Greek and Roman, Hindu and Aztec. When the animal was not visually fitting to be hybridized with the human, he represented it in an another relationship with the mankind inspired by literature (The Master and Margarita by Mikhaïl Boulgakov), and film (King Kong) and so on. Sometimes he takes the liberty to create an animal painting which magnifies the animal. He produces an incomparable soft blue-gray light that marks his signature style in most of his works.

Philippe Garel, a member of Academy of Fine Arts since 2015, exhibited regularly in Paris, Rouen, Turin, and Bologna. He had his solo exhibitions at the Museum of Sens in 2011, at Cognacq-Jay Museum in Paris in 2007, at Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen in 2002.

Hervé Heuzé has been represented by Galerie Richard since 2003. He exhibited at Borusan Contemporary in Istanbul in 2013, and his works have joined their collection. The Emily Davis Gallery at the University of Akron, Ohio, has dedicated a solo exhibition in 2011. He will have his first solo exhibition at Galerie Richard in 2016 in New York.