The insatiable intellectual curiosity pushes Bernard Moninot to be interested in multiple physical phenomena. From these scientific singularities, the artist extracts all the subtle poetry.    He creates abstract works often based on a fictitious function which would have no other use than to reveal an invisible beauty: a dew catcher, the traces of an anemograph, a bird’s flight or the movement of the stars.

The exhibition takes its name from the space installation Ensecrètement (2018-2019). It is a spectacular narrative device consisting of four steel and artificial silk frames forming a transparent chamber in which a set of suspended elements are illuminated and activated by a mechanism. At the heart of the chamber is a phrase borrowed from the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, « The strange memory of that which has never been deposited in a memory ». The sentence turns on itself like a prayer wheel and the light projects multiple reflections on the silk room and beyond.

This work is a sequel to the installation Chambre d’écho (2012-2017) exhibited at the Jean Fournier gallery during the eponymous exhibition in 2018.   This new work uses a process of synesthetic creation – a neurological phenomenon in which several senses are associated – often evoked by Bernard Moninot, produced by the reminiscence of visionary moments generated by the sound frequencies of the A of a tuning fork resonating in contact with objects.

Ensecrètement is undoubtedly the most autobiographical work produced by the artist.

The second major work in the exhibition is the sculpture DewPoint (2019), designed to be a fictional device for collecting dewdrops.

« In creation, the birth of an idea is comparable to the natural process, where certain atmospheric conditions are necessary for the formation of the dew phenomenon.  The organic forms of Dewdrop can be found in the series of drawings Dewdrop Edge, made up of Indian ink washes, mica collage and gold threads; and in the series Avalanche Foreboding (2019), a work composed of two planes: an artificial silk canvas through which one can see transparent sections of mountains or glaciers painted in acrylic.
The exhibition also unveils three other recent series of drawings, a series of paintings and a series of editions that testify to Bernard Moninot’s extreme intellectual agility and constant curiosity.

Sketches, note-taking, plastic research or simple daydreams, these series are both the source and the traces of his creation.

Will be exhibited in particular Mémoire du vent TOME 2 (published in 1999-2019) thirty drawings recording the effects of air movement; Pierres retournés (2019) which is inspired by the hidden part of the stones that is never in contact with air or light, or Migrateur partiel (2019), a celestial cartography drawn with a bird’s feather, inspired by the seasonal migration of birds that orient their movements with the position of the stars.

While showing his most recent work, this exhibition closes a very dense period for the artist whose work has been shown in four important institutions those past two years: at Cabinet des dessins, at Ecole nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris, at Domaine de Kerguéhennec and at Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen.

Two series (140 x 110 cm and 76 x 56 cm), repreent the artist’s recent researchs. More focus movements, circular movements in a wider color palete, going from round to flower like shapes. The pieces are being passed through by energy flux that structure and dramatize the space. The superposition of colorful lines brings intensity to those flux, when their breaks multiply this energetic sensation, one can feel this vital momentum dear to Bergson, almost musical.

The ensemble of pieces reveal this great drawer’s virtuosity; a wise balance between control and spontaneity, between vitality and concentratio. A unique way to transcend simple moves, draw a line, doodole, underline, stress, and bring the viewer a light year away…

Mitchell and Riopelle were mutually driven not only by their passionate love for each other, but also by their intellectual and artistic intimacy. From their meeting in Paris in 1955until their separation in 1979, their works – rightdown to the titles – testify to the different holiday spots and painting places they shared; in short, to a life ogetherfor which Jean Fournier was privileged travelling companion. Calm and equable by nature, this charismatic figure frequented all sorts of strong-minded artists, to the point of describing himself as a « lay brother ».

So now it seems perfectly natural tha the pair should be united for the first time at the Rue du Bac gallery: a return to the roots. The works chosen match the scale of the venue, forming a kind of intimate, deeply felt trajectory expressive of Fournier’s choices and what still underpines the gallery’s identity today.

In 2017 the gallery was home to an exhibition of Simon Hantai’s work from the 1940s and 1950s. In it, between the lines, could be described a portrait of Jean Fournier as a bold, intuitive figure. When Joan Mitchell and Jean-Paul Riopelle Meet Jean Fournier points up another side of his personality: more intense, more inclined to acute sensitivity and a love of colour.

The exhibition is curated by Michel Martin, curator of the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec in 1975-2008, and organiser of the exhibition Mitchell/Riopelle. Un couple dans la démesure recently presented at the Fonds Edouard et Hélène Leclerc pour la Culture in Landerneau, France.

Since the 1990s Lucien’s work has been based on a vocabulary of forms and motifs rooted in the vegetal, the mineral, the organic and the human body, in series that address her themes in several media simultaneously: the body in drawing, sculpture and ceramics, and the vegetal mainly in drawing and paper cutouts. Each of these series reciprocally enriches the others.

Lucien has been working on the Feuiller series since 2012. Invited to take part in the multi-museum Dessiner-Tracer project of autumn 2011–autumn 2012, she visited the Musée Matisse at Le Cateau-Cambrésis and the La Piscine museum in Roubaix. Her initial response took the form of notebook drawings and cutouts, some of which appeared in the journal Cursif, which accompanied the project. This series was inspired not only by Matisse’s drawings and cutouts, but also by old fabrics the artist found in the Roubaix museum’s textile department. The outcome is fruitful interplay between two notions of the decorative: we find Matisse’s freedom in Lucien’s vegetal and linear forms, as well as a particular attentiveness on her part to what the applied arts can offer.

The French title carries overtones of « leaf » in the sense both of paper and plant. The Feuiller are a core part of an approach which unifies drawing and motif and uses observation of the vegetal as the premise for a move towards abstraction. The repertoire comprises cutout shapes in the form of individual or juxtaposed silhouettes and outlines: abstract variations on vegetal or organic originals which are then overlaid on grids; these latter can be regular, repetitive, geometrical or random.

While Lucien’s vocabulary remains immediately recognisable, these new works represent a radical shift in her relationship with colour over the last six years: a daring evolution towards a wedding of muted and bolder hues and increasingly intense contrasts. The grids are rendered more complex by a proliferation of lines and motifs reminiscent of the Art & Craft movement. Here we detect something more gestural – expressionistic, even – that is totally new in this artist’s oeuvre.

For this exhibition she has come up with a distinctive presentation on the wide wall below the skylight: a mingling of different formats like that in Matisse’s studio, where the cutout compositions created an endlessly renewed environment. This underscores the notion of series and the passage from one work to the next, while also using the scale of the venue to situate Lucien’s work spatially.

The exhibition is accompanied by an artist’s book in an edition of 300, 30 of which include an original work.