Opening on Friday, November 30 from 6 PM.
Espace A VENDRE 17 rue Smolett 06300 Nice
Emmanuel Régent
+ Hakima El Djoudi
+ Karine Rougier
For his first solo exhibition at L’Espace A VENDRE, Emmanuel Régent unveils a unique universe, where the viewer finds themselves as if facing the silent cry of a voiceless crowd.
He amputates, shifts, puts daily objects on hold to signify differently; He «invites the viewer to complete the gaps, to gain ground without taking up space».
It is at the 4th ring that the answering machine activates, so it is at this precise moment of silence that anything can happen.
In the showroom, Hakima El Djoudi offers other forms of manifestations, as strong as they are discreet, with her Little Armies.
Finally, it is the aerial drawing of Karine Rougier on the circular panel on the façade that will welcome passersby.
In his drawings, paintings, and installations, Emmanuel Régent sets up processes of unstable appearances. He hides, shifts, then invites us to connect the pieces.
His works appear differently depending on the moments, sometimes randomly, through the observer’s intervention or depending on the weather. It is a discreet work, sometimes on the edge of visibility. «Author of felt-tip drawings and wall drawings in chalk at the limit of visibility, Emmanuel Régent also practices painting in a mode of withdrawal. His mute and often incomplete images reveal themselves through a subtle system of appearance and disappearance. In the painting “L’Icône”, the eye perceives from afar only the black cone located in the center of the composition. Then, by moving closer, it distinguishes the discreet portrait of a young woman drinking, traced with a mauve line barely darker than the white of the canvas. The abstract image then takes on its full meaning. The drawing here is reduced to the essential as if to underline the fragility of the visible. The sculpture “The Other Day” functions like a rotating, tactile display stand offered to the public’s fingers, in which one drawing chases the other like so many successive fragments the beholder could fill in. Playing with a large oil stain marking the ground and the history of the Soardi gallery, the artist slips the discreet drawing of a hand pouring a glass of wine into a corner of the room. The accident thus becomes part of the work»*.
*Catherine Macchi de Vilhena 2006
Excerpts from the text Sometimes, E.C.B
