The spectator only recalls the parts kept in color in which Picasso is painting on a glass slab, he does not remember that the movie is mainly in black and white.

The exhibition The Real World is in black and white leads to the questioning of the notion of truth in color. A new found unity between night and day can be perceived.

The exhibition presents pieces from different artists working around black and around white, or using color in a way that unexpectedly, doesn’t give the spectator the immediate impression to be in front of color.

His works were inspired by Conrad Gessner’s Historia Animalium (1551-1558). Vermont replaced the 16^th century academic « drawings-engravings » by his own, but he kept  the original captions.

The Swiss naturalist is considered by many as the first modern zoologist. In this  History of animals, a vast work of 3.500 pages, each species is thoroughly described with the addition of  their use made by poets and philosophers.

Vermont’s drawings tend to overtake Gessner’s legacy, almost dynamite it. After his graduation, he isolated himself for several months. During this time which he calls his « unlearning period » he tried to rediscover the naivety and yet narrative efficiency of children’s drawings. His bestiary is authentic and subversive, in conflict with Gessner’s academic strictness. We are touched by these funny, lively, burlesque drawings.

With coloured pencils, pens and pastels, he offers the animals a second life. As the curator Julie Crenn wrote, he produces  « an intense and disarming expressiveness ». This artist is extremely skilful, his stroke is altogether wild and precise, his colours exhilarating. The words or expressions he adds are humoristic comments to Gessner’s captions.

This exhibition is supported by the Centre national des arts plastiques

(Subsidy for a first solo exhibition)