The Young Creation Awards have been awarded to Mouna Bakouli and Johan Christ-Bertrand. Each of the two winners received a creation grant of 2000 euros.
The two young artists will be invited in October 2019 to present a joint exhibition at the Galerie de la Marine.
The works of Mouna Bakouli and Johan Christ-Bertrand can be found in the exhibition “The Valley of the Strange” Promotion Villa Arson 2018
which takes place in two locations, Galerie de la Marine and Villa Arson.
Created in 2009, the Young Creation Awards distinguish two young artists among the graduates of Villa Arson. They reflect a strong commitment to help and encourage young artists as they leave school, to establish themselves and develop professional projects in the art world.
¨ Mouna Bajouli – City of Nice Award
The young artist paints and draws on inexpensive materials both for financial reasons and for independence. She gradually settled into these practices of painting and drawing, inspired by the gouaches of Henri Michaut, the lithographs of Jonathan Messe, the self-portraits of Artaud, the paintings of Martin Kippenberger, and Werner Büttner. She then read Adorno’s philosophy. Following that, she wrote her dissertation on improvisation and jazz and learned not to be satisfied with her previous work. It was then that she began creating installations where her work found coherence and consistency, embracing Nicolas Boileau’s phrase “What is conceived well is expressed clearly.”
Johan-Christ Bertrand – Venet Foundation Award
His first practice involved figurative drawing in notebooks. When he transitioned from notebooks to canvas and began painting, he wondered what painting could offer that photography did not already allow. His initial inspiration comes from comics and cartoons. In his painting, hyperrealism is not far, nor is Californian painting, but not exclusively. Favoring clean lines, flat colors, and pop colors, he starts with a space resembling a stage, a panel where he builds and places objects and figures. But always very few. He follows a protocol. Popular culture is very important in his work: bar pinball machines like in Pinball Clarfield (visible at the Galerie de la Marine) as well as cartoons or the furniture decoration of the 18th century in Alsace with its lures, illusions, and taste for the fake. But always in a refined, as simple as possible manner.
