Galleries in Paris

The Jean Fournier Gallery is pleased to present the third exhibition of Christophe Robe, Aquarium and Asteroid . In this new pictorial inventory, the artist delivers his particular relationship to the world, to all worlds, from the stratosphere to the abyss. The exhibition is composed of more than twenty paintings, some works of very large format and others of small and medium format. They represent doors and windows » giving the spectator the illusion of being at the edge of an aquatic abyss or in the the weightlessness of an unexplored cosmos. However, Christophe Robe is not satisfied with formal oppositions. His landscapes constitute links between natural elements and synthetic materials. He draws the silhouette of a branch or a line evoking a cave painting or, on the contrary, a flat color with the precision of a mechanical of a mechanical laser print. No dogmatism emerges from his pictorial thought, the works are not titled, the drawn forms are not completely drawn forms are not completely identifiable. Nevertheless, Robe is in the suggestion of forms, nothing must subjugate the spectator’s gaze.
He does not want his work to be only the trace of his perceptive experiences. Rather, he wants it to act as a mirror in which the individual projects and interprets the work according to their own range of references.
The gallery’s programming focuses on intergenerational dialogues and is based on the history and strong identity of the artists championed by Jean Fournier since the 1950s. In the recent works of Christophe Robe, we find links with the surrealist universe of Simon Hantaï or this plunge into the infinity of blues and greens that recalls the environment in the painting of Marcelle Loubchansky. Also, many aesthetic references emerge, from the marginality of Hyeronimus Bosch to the short film by Charles and Ray Eames, Powers of Ten (1977) which deals with the division of the scales of the universe according to the factor ten, from the galaxy to the epidermis. Christophe Robe’s work is in a way a reinterpretation of these scale shifts, from the immense to the infinitely small.
Another striking fact of his practice: Christophe Robe buys as many pots of paint as albums of music; in his studio, the music library is next to the shelves filled with paintings. His work is indeed fluid and rhythmic, with no preparatory drawings underlying the flow of ideas.
The artist lets himself be guided by the color and the sensation it gives him, by the tool he works with or by the dimensions of the canvas he has decided to fill. According to him, he is the first to travel in his work. This exhibition shows the maturation of Christophe Robe’s work and provides the viewer with enough points of attachment to offer him a weightless journey.