CE QUI ARRÊTAIT CES DAMES – JEANROCH DARD

Galleries — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:49:00 +0000

It was the stupendous sight of the great exhibition of household linen which had caused the ladies to stop. First of all, surrounding them, there was the entrance hall, with bright mirrors, and paved with mosaics, in which displays of inexpensive goods were drawing the voracious crowd. Then there were the galleries, dazzling in their whiteness like a polar vista, a snowy expanse ufolding with the endlessness of steppes draped with ermine, a mass of glaciers lit up beneath the sun. It was the same whiteness as that displayed in the outside windows, but heightened and on a colossal scale, burning from one end of the enormous nave to the other with the white blaze of a conflagration at its height. There was nothing but white, all the white goods for every department, an orgy of white, a white star whose radiance was blinding at first, and made it impossible to distinguish any details in in the midst of this total whiteness. Soon the eye grew accustomed to it: to the left in the Monsigny Gallery there stretched out white promontories of linens and calicoes, white rocks of sheets, table-napkins, and handkerchiefs; while in the Michodière Gallery on the right, occupied by the haberdashery, hosiery, and woolens, white edifices were displayed made of pearl buttons, together with a huge construction of white socks, and a whole hall covered with a huge construction of white socks, and a whole covered with white swansdown and illuminated by a distant shaft of light. But the light was especially bright in the central gallery, where the ribbons and fichus, gloves and silks were situated. The counters disappeared beneath the white of silks and ribbons, of gloves and fichus. Around the iron pillars were twined flounces of white muslin, knotted here and there with white scarves. The staircases were decked with white draperies, draperies of piqué alternating with dimity, running the whole length of the banisters and encircling the halls right up to the second floor; and the ascending whiteness appeared to take wings, merging together and disappearing like a fly of swans. The whiteness then fell back again from the domes in a rain of eiderdown, a sheet of huge snowflakes: white blankets and white coverlets were waving in the air, hung up like banners in a church; long streams of pillow-lace seemed suspended like swarms of white butterflies, humming there motionless; other types of lace were fluttering everywhere, floating like gossamer against a summer sky, filling the air with their white breath. And over the silk counter in the main hall there was the miracle, the altar of this cult of white – a tent made of white curtains hanging down from the glass roof. Muslins, gauzes, and guipures flowed in light ripples, while richly embroidered tulles and lenghts of oriental silk and silver lamé served as a background to this gigantic decoration, which was evocative both of the tabernacle and of the bedroom. It looked like a great white bed, its virginal whiteness waiting, as in legends, for the white princess, for she who would one day come, all powerful, in her white bridal veil.

- «Oh! It’s fantastic! the ladies kept repeating. Amazing!»

Zola, Emile. 1883. Au bonheur des dames. Paris: Edition G. Charpentier et E. Fasquelle.
Extrait, chapitre XIV

FRANCOIS – DARD

Galleries — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:03:49 +0000

For too long a time affiliated to urban art (a label so vague that it would be better to ban it definitively), Samuel François demonstrates with RECENT WORKS that his work easily exceeds the city and its outskirts. Skillful back and forth between ornamental, minimalism and surrealism, his new productions build up a personal museum.
From this path made of dead ends and multiplied down roads, the French artist (born in 1977 in Pompey, Lorraine) proposes a set of works widely inspired by the classic codes of museography. RECENT WORKS echoes OPEN 4 BUSINESS, his last exhibition at the gallery ALICE in Brussels. Monochrome cotton canvases stretched on frames, black structures freely inspired by some furniture, and a slide show compose this third personal exhibition of Samuel François at the gallery JeanrochDard. Proof is that, if Samuel François is unconventional, he is also rigorous. Playing delicately with the codes of varied currents, he succeeds in creating a formal and sensitive balance. Balance where the past and its nostalgic tints, spread out through biographical elements (more or less identifiable), infuse in an unstructured and branched out present.

The geographical location of the artist tells a lot about his inspirations. Based in Lorraine, in the small town of Hettange-Grande (around thirty kilometers from Metz, but also the borders of Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany), he made his first artistic statements outside in nature, painting very eighties patterns (confettis and party streamers) on the military bunkers surrounding the area. Very quickly, his practice of graffiti enriched itself with influences from graphic design, until it finally totally free itself from these disciplines.
His color gradations pieces – the Spontaneous series – illustrate this evolution : vast chromatic landscapes spray-painted on paper, between photographic emulsion and vectorized images. The landscape – and the ballads brings out – is one of the recurrent themes of his production. In February 2011, he proposed, as curator, the exhibition A new idea of landscape where he presented several artists of his generation that he claims as direct influences, both for their work and for the way they proceed. Among them are American artist Israel Lund and Italian artist Renato Leotta. Artistic friendships often begins via exchanges on the internet.
Far from being insignificant, Internet is a key element in the understanding of Samuel François’s world. In the service of his artistic acuteness, websites teem with images waiting to be revealed, added, duplicated or refocused. Thus, in October 2011, he presented No I’m waiting for…, a huge neon produced on the occasion of Nuit Blanche, as the promise of a work to come.

Galleries in Paris » Samuel François

CE QUI ARRÊTAIT CES DAMES – JEANROCH DARD

FRANCOIS – DARD