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In 1985, at the request of Médias magazine, Roberto Battistini created a staged portrait of Serge Gainsbourg as a tribute to Dalí. A fervent admirer of the surrealist painter, Gainsbourg lent himself to the game, and wearing a hairpiece of the master's famous moustache, he shouted, like Dalí, "Je suis fou du chocolat Lanvin" (I'm crazy about Lanvin chocolate). This photograph by Roberto Battistini is the starting point for a series of portraits, this time of Gainsbourg. Suggested by the photographer to contemporary artists from a wide variety of backgrounds, from video art to street art to culinary art, each of them reinterpreted this now iconic image. Inspired by the title of a song, like Peter Klasen, Juan le Parc or Pierre Gagnaire, or projecting their own universe, like Hervé Di Rosa, Jacques Villeglé or Erró, they offer us an original work of art. ORLAN hybridizes with Dalí and Gainsbourg, Mark Brusse rediscovers the fundamentals of Surrealism through Buñuel, and Jean-Luc Moerman and Anna Kache give free rein to their imagination, one embroidering tender, nostalgic words into the image, the other scarifying the singer's face, while Pierre-Marie Lejeune's luminous sculpture responds to Catherine Ikam and Louis Fléri's 3D quantum portrait. This project, begun over ten years ago by Roberto Battistini, continues today, illustrating the immense vitality and creativity of contemporary art.

Collector and patron Sandra Hegedüs welcomed YourArt to share her discoveries on the platform. Founder in 2009 of SAM Art Projects, a foundation dedicated to promoting emerging artists from the global South and hosting them in residence in France, she also created the SAM Prize for Contemporary Art, which awards logistical and financial support to a European artist each year for the production of a creative project. These cross-invitations offer young artists a museum exhibition exhibition in a renowned French institution. Sandra Hegedüs is President of the Board of Directors of the Villa Arson, a public institution in Nice that groups together an art center, an artists' residence, an art school and a specialized library, for which she also created a prize. An insatiable collector, she supports creation from the heart and with all the communicative passion associated with her Brazilian origins. Wandering from work to work, it was with great enthusiasm that she discovered and selected for YourArt the works of artists whose work deals with human relationships and the intimate, composing an ensemble which, like her personal collection, builds a narrative, that of a life of encounters and commitment.

Abstract art is an artistic movement born at the beginning of the 20th century that attempts to give a new representation of reality. Breaking with the concept of traditional, figurative art, abstraction seeks emotion through form and color. It is an art that does not resort to the representation or evocation of the reality of a landscape, still life or portrait. Artists such as Vasily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian do not seek to deliver a message or express a precise idea in their paintings. They create their own language, that of emotion, of a world that abstracts from reality. They create a visual experience that arouses emotions specific to each individual. Jackson Pollock once said: "Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you." Faced with abstract works, free your mind of all thought and let the painting move you. This selection allows you to browse through works by both gallery-represented and non-represented artists, all of whom describe their work as influenced by the abstract movement. Great discoveries!

The bas-relief of a hand on the soft pink surface of a piece of marble, the fossil of a digital avatar sculpted by Darta Sidere, opens this series of chrysalide works. Metamorphosis is induced in these creations by a simulation of tactility that echoes the techniques and materials used. Nelly Zagury's magic lamp is modelled in clay from a breast. Rubbing its surface is both sensual and emancipatory. Quentin Fromont's inks flow over struggling phalanges, or love an invisible body. Skin and crimson textures form an intimate shoreline with an uncertain outcome. Another glowing dark fantasy landscape - that of Alison Flora, whose Gothic vaults open onto a precipice and mountains painted with the artist's own blood. Léna Gayaud's enamelled stoneware wildflower fits into this medieval register. A rural gargoyle, it rubs shoulders with Jérémie Cosimi's painting in which two hands enclose an apparent termite mound as a face, in a ritual of concealment. The human figure continues its transfiguration in James Barnor's photograph of a Ghanaian headdress - ten hair tornadoes rising from a starry stripe. Alban Turquois' recycling of tin takes the form of a seat on which the metal's past lives can be deciphered. The fragile moult of these tactile incursions on matter concludes with the collapse of Roberto Avila Pezet's sand castle.

A title that encapsulates the multifaceted dimension of our project. A title in the form of a suitcase word that gives voice to its double reality, its double materiality: that of the natural or urban landscape correlated with that of the scopic impulse. It is around this duality that we have structured and conceived our curation and paced our choice of works and artists. Our starting point was an observation: human beings are beings of language, inextricably linked to the function of the gaze. And one who passionately devours the world through his gaze, finding himself defenseless in the face of the desire to see. With our artists, we bring this impulse into play through motif, linking the landscape to the scopic. And we ask ourselves how, by what magic, with what tools, through what processes, the creative artist brings about this link. This is why, from a reality transfigured by Mario Picardo's pop chromatic range, to Coline Ramonet-Bonis's hybrid eco-systems, from Silvio Mildo's flamboyant, harshly cut nature, to Amélie Bernard's lines of welded brazed metal volumes, through Liam Sy Paquemar's hybrid forms, Aurélien Finance's suspended planters, Margot Pietri's artificial landscape and Andrew Erdos's molten elements, we make visible the fractures that create links. Like so many Land_Scopes.

The image of two souls coming together has been around since the dawn of time. Friends, lovers, parents, the motif of the union of two beings fascinates. Since the Paleolithic era, when it appeared only subliminally in an eroticized female figurine, it has inhabited every era. Forerunners of the demand for ever-elusive equality, in the couple statues of ancient Egypt, men and women are treated identically, in terms of dimensions, postures and the reciprocity of tender gestures. This same civilization bequeathed us the first known trace of intimate love between two men, a double portrait in profile, eye-to-eye, accompanied by the legend "Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum lived together and loved each other passionately". In our era, few artists have never confronted this. Images of embrace and complicity, but also of tension where the space between the protagonists imposes itself like a third presence. Complex by virtue of the range of situations and feelings to be conveyed, this much-revisited motif could become wearying, redundant or even "clichéd". It's the artist's singularity of vision that constantly renews it, like an encounter taking place before our very eyes. The magic and mystery of the image of the couple will never be exhausted, because it tells us something profound about humanity, something original and essential in the pure etymological sense.

Drawing Now Art Fair is the first art fair dedicated exclusively to contemporary drawing. From March 21 to 24, 2024, art lovers, collectors and professionals are invited to discover a selection of over 70 galleries in Paris. Galerie Suzanne Tarasiève presents "Main droite sans attribut, annulaire et majeur fléchis, face interne, Cambodge", 2023, a large canvas by Romain Bernini inspired by shamanic practices. By Lara Sedbon exhibits Fabien Mérelle's realistic and poetic drawings, including "Sam" (2023), which welcomes life with open arms. Galerie Vallois presents Emanuel Proweller's historical geometric abstractions (1951), while Galerie Catherine Putman exhibits Frédéric Poincelet's graphic drawings (2022). From the "Chapelle" series (2023), Yann Kebbi's architectural composition at Galerie Marel invites meditation. Inspired by African textiles, hip-hop culture and street art, Francisco Vidal exhibits his cubist portraits (2023) at 193 Gallery. At Galerie Papillon, Catheryn Koch (2023) sews lines to pay tribute to women, warriors of hope in the face of all forms of injustice. At Antoine Dupin, visitors can discover the work of Hélène Jayet, including "Femme Bestsileo - Madagascar" (2024), a reinterpretation of an archive photograph in a mesh of black dots.