SARRE – POLARIS

Galleries — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 15:49:37 +0000

Galerie Polaris is delighted to present the first solo exhibition by Lassana Sarre (b. 1994, lives and works in Paris) from February 8 to March 15.
The title, L’enfant aux cerises, takes its title from a painting by Edouard Manet, depicting the young boy who served as his model on several occasions, and who was also his assistant. The psychologically fragile boy hanged himself in Manet’s studio. He was 15 years old.
Look closely, and listen carefully, to what Lassana Sarre is telling us, for each painting, each drawing has a story, one that the artist builds from his own life, the legacy of his life, that of his family and friends. The subjects are often linked to his family history, to buried memories of the colonial era, to his own history. Works with a memorial connotation, playing with the relationship of twins, each painting is a moment inscribed by an experience.
It’s important to note that Lassana grew up in Vitry sur Seine, where as a child he watched the construction of the MacVal( Museum of Contemporary Art in the suburbs) , which was to be his first important and decisive encounter with contemporary art.
Although his work focuses on heritage and memory, and on important figures erased by colonial rule and censorship, this recontextualization of the black figure in painting is offered here as a form of questioning.
The subjects are often sketched in shadows, using audacious colors, as if the artist wanted to escape the rules of painting. Lassana Sarre combines the serenity of the faces with the virtuosity of the subjects’ movement.
Everything seems suspended, frozen in time. The effect is accentuated by a precise painting technique. You can’t help but be caught up in these glances. Lassana Sarra wants to paint the soul of his subjects. A soul and feelings that he manages to capture with subtlety, through the deep respect he has for his models. And he shares these feelings with us, so that each and every one of us can relate to them. The stories we are told are those of the characters portrayed. Lassana Sarre doesn’t paint portraits at random; each one has something to tell us. Gordon Parks* once wrote that “a man’s truth is not always shown in his face”. And it is with this remarkable faculty of extrospection that the artist transmits this emotional charge to us in small strokes, like a storyteller using image rather than voice. This young artist has already demonstrated remarkable maturity. Lassana Sarre is certainly one of the five French artists to watch very closely today.
*Gordon Parks – American – photographer, film director,
journalist, novelist 1912 – 2006

Galerie Polaris – Paris 3

Galleries — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 06:08:39 +0000

Created by Bernard Utudjian, Polaris Gallery is one of the first contemporary art gallery of this area of Le Marais, in Paris. The new space rue des Arquebusiers, ( incredible array of contemporary talent between this street and rue Saint-Claude) was inaugurated in 2009, (The development was confided to Odile Decq, architect of recent Museum of Contemporary Art in Roma ( Macro) . Polaris made the very first solo exhibitions of the main artists represented, and is always open to emerging and newest tendencies in art. The gallery represents : Etienne Armandon, Eric Aupol, Bart Baele, Yto Barrada, Monika Brandmeier, Matthias Bruggmann, Antonio Caballero, Marcos Carrasquer, John Casey, Odile Decq, Simon Faithfull, Vanessa Fanuele, Harald Fernagu, Patrick Guns, Anthony Hernandez, Louis Heilbronn, Khaled Jarrar, Richard Mudariki, Sara Ouhaddou, Nigel Rolfe, Gaétan Vaguelsy, Walter Van Beirendonck, Clémence Van Lunen, Simon Willems.

Galleries in Paris » Lassana Sarre

SARRE – POLARIS

Galerie Polaris – Paris 3