Anatomy of Light: Group Show, Paris

 Here, the Belgian artist describes her relationship to light as the material she works with. This light/matter antithesis no longer shocks us. From Hilma af Klint to Pierre Soulages, the history of painting is filled with figures fascinated by light, theorizing about it to better manipulate it. The same is true of the history of volume, with its profusion of neon lights, optical games and immersive light installations. The emergence of photography, meanwhile, comes literally from an attempt to capture its components, a desire to grasp its qualities.

     These artists can be seen as subjective prisms. They difract light, shape it and then project it onto a chosen plastic form - the fruit of their research. Each canvas, each sculpture can be read as an article, a sensitive study of waves, their behavior and their place in our lives. Like quasi-scientists, the three artists in the Anatomy of light exhibition share their visions of the body. Each tries to approach its reality by exploring its effects on different pigments, surfaces and materials, like so many tools for revealing its spectrum.

     In a new, more immersive and atmospheric use of space, Galerie Duret will explore these inventors' use of light through three examples.

    First, we'll observe how Kean decrypts waves by repeating the gesture of shading, declining the nuances.

     Next, we'll see how Dominick Leuci hooks rays into the material of his painting to set it in motion: appropriating luminous energy, making it vibrate in circuits of warm tones. 

     Finally, we'll look at how Johannes has succeeded in making the lighting resonate at the heart of the vinyl, while projecting waves of iridescent reflections around it, changing as the audience moves.

Paul Gonzalez - Beaux-Arts de Paris