It brings together the works of five artists, assembled for the occasion from private collections or directly from the painters themselves. Thanks to their imagination, Denis Castellas from Nice, Gérard Gasiorowski, Valérie Favre, Stéphane Pencréac’h, and Alun Williams have revisited the history of art, spanning abstraction and figuration.
Enter and let your imagination soar. The exhibition “Le Chemin de peinture” at the MAMAC in Nice immerses the viewer in the discovery of canvases that straddle the line between abstraction and figuration. A series of paintings, which can be described as dazzling, reveal the talent of Gérard Gasiorowski, who passed away in 1986, Denis Castellas, Valérie Favre, Stéphane Pencréac’h, and Alun Williams. Five artists who come together, according to Michèle Brun, the museum’s curator: “All have a strong interest in dissolution and erasure in their paintings,” she explains. “The entire exhibition is based on a strong engagement with art history.” In their own way, “without copying,” she specifies, the painters have redefined it and reassembled multiple works from different eras. Thus, one can glimpse allusions to Velázquez, sculptor Julio Gonzales, or even Picasso. This is especially felt in the paintings of Castellas, “some of whose works are still fresh,” exclaims Michèle Brun, and Gérard Gasiorowski. He is the author of the concept that gave this exhibition its title, which draws parallels between History and the artist’s reflections, even his fantasies. More than this are the melancholic and tragic ideas in the work of Stéphane Pancréac’h. Against a baroque backdrop, at times depicting himself pensively in his studio, or describing his dreams, he also chooses photographs from everyday life which he retouches, frames, and completes.
Stains and Stagings
Unlike freedom, one’s imagination does not stop where another’s begins. Thus, the surprising Valérie Favre, who has a background in theater, mixes history and staging with soft hues. One can appreciate inspirations from the Renaissance or a replica from the movie Mulholland Drive (also the title of the work). A centaur looms over Hollywood at night. Then, like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, the Swiss artist takes us into a fantastic world.
Alun Williams seems very peculiar at first glance but his paintings are remarkably subtle in their imagination. This Englishman symbolizes his characters using a stain. “Jules Verne is represented with a stain photographed in the street named after him in Paris and Giuseppe Garibaldi with another, spotted not far from the beach where he fished in New York,” enthuses the MAMAC exhibition curator. Alun Williams reproduces his stains in the locations where these famous characters often found themselves. This better explains why the imagination is the main theme of this superb exhibition.
