BE MY GUEST _ 1st part

Neïla Czermak Ichti . Jochen Gerner . Ramuntcho Matta . Manuela Marques . David Renaud . Stéphanie Saadé

It will be the opportunity to present paintings, films, drawings and installations never yet shown at the gallery. Most of these works have already travelled according to the artists invited by museums, art centers, galleries and artist residencies. All these places build up an essential network in an artist ‘s career.

Today the gallery reciprocates these invitations and gathers 6 artists.

The fist one to be invited will be Neïla Czermak Ichti. Her work has been discovered in the exhibition “Désolé” devised by Mohamed Bourouissa at galerie Edouard Manet, (Gennevilliers). Neïla Czermak Ichti lives in Marseilles, and studies at the fine arts college. Through drawings and paintings, she depicts her family and her friends. The representation of apparently ordinary and trivial scenes refers to her beliefs, her cultures, and takes on magic and invisible dimensions.

For the firs time, Jochen Gerner will present a set of 80 pictures drawn while on the phone from 2009 to 2019. This series entitled “Atelier” has just been published by “l’Association”. This work is a criticism of language and image, and shows this artist’s polymorphism.

Stéphanie Saadé will present two works “Cut Colour” and “Burnt Measure”, emblematic of her approach expressing physical or temporal distances. She develops a suggestive language, using poetry and metaphor. The clue is often to be found in the artist’s personal history.

Following an invitation from Lodève Museum, Manuela Marques has stayed on the Causses plateaus, where she has filmed and taken photographs of the countryside she has observed, altered and re-enchanted. She will present two large format photographs entitled “seeds”.

Ramuntcho Matta will present a photograph of Brion Gysin, he met when he was 16. This founding relationship still feeds Ramuntcho Matta’s work.

Last but not least David Renaud will present a work entitled “les courants océaniques”. With it he tries and explores space, which allows him to work out experimentation both physical and mental.

STÉPHANIE SAADÉ

Anne  

Barrault  

gallery  

is  

pleased  

to  

propose  

Stéphanie  

Saadé’s  

first  

solo  

show  

in  

France.

Stéphanie  

Saadé  

was  

born  

in  

Lebanon,  

in  

the  

midst  

of  

the  

civil  

war.  

Today,  

she  

occupies  

a  

place  

on  

the  

new  

contemporary  

 Lebanese  

 art  

 scene.  

 Her  

 works  

 are  

 rich  

 of  

 her  

 travels  

 and  

 her  

 stays  

 in  

 Lebanon  

 as  

 well  

 as  

 in  

 China,  

 in  

 France  

 and  

 the  

 Netherlands.

The  

strength  

of  

her  

work  

lies  

in  

it  

being  

both  

conceptual  

and  

sensitive.  

This  

is  

partly  

due  

to  

her  

use  

of  

reduced  

means  

 which  

benefits  

richness  

of  

meaning.
Impossible  

love,  

made  

of  

two  

threads,  

one  

rising  

from  

the  

ground,  

the  

other  

coming  

down  

from  

the  

ceiling,  

and  

joining  

 in  

their  

centre,  

forms  

a  

minimal  

installation.  

Apart  

from  

the  

means  

used,  

what  

is  

emphasized  

is  

the  

perception  

of  

the  

 meeting  

of  

what  

rises  

from  

the  

ground  

and  

what  

comes  

down  

from  

above,  

a  

rare  

and  

difficult  

encounter  

made  

possible  

 by the artist.

With  

Golden  

Memories,  

another  

impossible  

encounter  

takes  

place  

where  

the  

past  

becomes  

the  

mirror  

of  

the  

present.  

The  

 memory,  

turned  

to  

gold,  

absorbs  

the  

present  

in  

a  

disturbing  

way.  

The  

immutable  

and  

the  

transitory  

encounter  

in  

Opposite  

 Chain,  

where  

iron  

destined  

to  

disappear  

and  

stainless  

steel  

form  

the  

same  

chain.

This  

tension  

runs  

throughout  

Stéphanie  

Saadé’s  

work.  

She  

has  

thus  

entitled  

her  

exhibition  

En  

Dormance  

(in  

dormancy),  

 this  

particular  

state  

where  

life  

awaits  

to  

begin.

EN DORMANCE  

«…will,  

then,  

matter  

be  

destroyed  

or  

not?» The  

gospel  

of  

Mary  

Magdalene

Seeds  

sprout  

in  

the  

dark,  

the  

dark  

corresponds  

to  

the  

night,  

and  

the  

night  

to  

dreams.

Instead  

of  

selling  

his  

cow  

for  

ten  

silver  

coins,  

Jack  

exchanged  

it  

for  

a  

bean.  

The  

next  

morning,  

like  

in  

a  

dream,  

while  

 Jacques  

was  

asleep,  

the  

bean  

had  

grown  

and  

reached  

the  

sky.  

In  

yesteryears,  

a  

diamond  

was  

exchanged  

for  

a  

carob  

seed:  

 with  

a  

weight  

and  

a  

size  

unfailingly  

regular,  

the  

seed  

was  

equivalent  

to  

one  

carat.  

Dormancy.  

To  

sleep,  

lying  

down.  

Buried  

 like  

the  

dead,  

whose  

feet  

and  

head  

touch  

the  

ground,  

under  

the  

earth,  

the  

seed  

slowly  

traces  

the  

path  

from  

the  

Horizontal  

 Country  

 to  

 the  

 Vertical  

 Country.  

 “[Jacob]  

 had  

 a  

 dream  

 in  

 which  

 he  

 saw  

 a  

 stairway  

 resting  

 on  

 the  

 earth,  

 with  

 its  

 top  

 reaching to heaven”.

Dormancy  

indicates  

a  

form  

of  

slowed-down  

life.  

Activity  

is  

reduced  

to  

the  

minimum,  

and  

the  

organism  

can  

keep  

its  

 energy  

longer.  

Moving  

into  

dormancy  

occurs  

in  

response  

to  

difficult  

or  

hostile  

external  

conditions:  

the  

diminution  

of  

 food  

resources,  

very  

high  

or  

very  

low  

temperatures  

etc.  

A  

survival  

strategy,  

a  

discreet  

and  

silent  

tactic,  

it  

enables  

one  

to  

 resist. Playing dead, sometimes for years. What happens in the inside? The  

dormant  

draws  

on  

his  

own  

resources.  

What  

can  

be  

produced  

in  

these  

conditions?

In  

dormancy,  

time  

flows  

differently.  

It  

runs  

more  

slowly  

inside  

than  

outside.  

Which  

moment  

to  

prolong?  

Which  

memory?  

 The  

moment  

before  

being  

born,  

before  

starting  

to  

grow  

up,  

can  

be  

extended,  

maybe  

forever.  

One  

can  

remain  

longer  

in  

a  

 chosen past, or extract oneself from time to become immortal.

In  

the  

confined  

space  

of  

the  

seed,  

introspection  

and  

recentering  

occur.  

How  

to  

stand  

in  

the  

centre  

of  

the  

world  

and  

wear  

 the  

world  

around  

oneself?  

“The  

universe  

is  

an  

infinite  

sphere  

whose  

centre  

is  

everywhere,  

and  

whose  

circumference  

is  

 nowhere”,  

as  

has  

been  

stated  

since  

antiquity  

to  

nowadays.  

At  

the  

centre  

of  

paradise  

springs  

the  

Fountain  

of  

Youth.  

From  

 it,  

four  

rivers  

flow  

towards  

the  

four  

cardinal  

points.

After  

dormancy,  

water  

flows  

on  

the  

seed  

and  

wakes  

it  

up.  

Autumn,  

winter,  

spring,  

summer,  

the  

seed  

takes  

the  

risk  

of  

 dying, and joins again the cycles of the day, the night, and the moon.

Stéphanie Saadé, July 2015