ВЫБОР ЭКСПЕРТОВ

Honneur aux dames! My latest book, "Les Suffragettes de l'art ou L'entrée des femmes à l'École des Beaux-Arts", has just been published by Editions des Beaux-Arts de Paris. It traces the long struggle of women artists to gain access to artistic education and thus exist in their own right in the art world. Today, the art market no longer depends on the opinion of a single male academic jury that favors the "entre-soi", it's the public that makes its choice according to its tastes, and a platform like YourArt leaves the field free for works to exist for themselves, beyond all conventional criteria and all geographical or mental limits. So let's make the most of it: Ladies First! Let's pay tribute to the platform's female artists. Whatever their generation, medium, art market status or career longevity, I let myself be guided by my own eyes and the strength of their work. Whether they are seasoned feminists, or simply women without flags or banners, this selection of works is all about letting the miracle of the eternal feminine emerge. From the emerging scene to more established artists, this selection offers a panorama of today's "Suffragettes of art".

Sculptural works with a domestic allure that take over the space, as the saying goes, more by their resonance than by their size. Sculptures imbued with humanity and topicality, because the artists are witnesses to the world. The evocation of a house in ruins (Icy & Sot). Behind the intertwined arabesques of a fragment of grid (Nelson Pernisco) rises the Monument aux monuments qui tombent (Mrdjan Bajic). "Eternity is scarcely longer than life" proclaims Nelson Pernisco. "Don't worry, everything wearies," replies Fulvia Nicolini. Amandine Guruceaga's acerbic riposte, "Su lengua afilada", is not long in coming. Erre in this desolate landscape, a strange assembly of motley residents: Petite Taaru (Ndary Lo), Botero (Romuald Hazoumé), Maryvonne and Sacha (Martine Buffet) with their pets (Max Coulon). In the rubble, a disco ball shatters on the ground (Nelson Pernisco). An abandoned suitcase reveals a dress no longer in use (Fulvia Nicolini). All around, scattered traces: a key (Claire Olivier), a ladder with broken steps (Marion Flamant), a stranded kite (Gaëlle Chotard), an insolently cheerful carillon (Cyrille Martin) and an hourglass measuring time that has stopped (Darta Sidere). Familiar accents in a world that no longer is.

From April 25 to 28, Art Brussels brings together collectors and art lovers from all over the world in the Art Deco palace of Brussels Expo, for a series of intense discoveries. YourArt offers you a glimpse of the treasures to be explored on the platform and seen at the fair through Sonia Perrin's picks of three of the French galleries present. Galerie Suzanne Tarasiève exhibits Romain Bernini's vibrantly colored portraits of trees, alongside Lucien Murat's "Prophecy of AI" and photographs from Mari Katayama's "Possession" series, which question our standards of beauty and social norms. Galerie Papillon presents "Of the grenadier", a white-lacquered bronze bust covered with pomegranate fruit by artist Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, which confronts past and present, playing with the ambivalence of words. VOID draws an intimate "Mom and dad when they were younger than I'm" in ink on paper, while Raphaëlle Péria scratches photo paper like an archaeologist to reveal hidden memories. Magnin-a shows the plastic-can sculptures of Romuald Hazoumé, currently representing Benin at the Venice Biennale. JP Mika colors hope in flowery motifs from which springs a joie de vivre. Steve Bandoma sketches a reappropriation of African history: "Art is a dynamic".

The concept of Balance carries within it both the idea of stability, being firmly planted on our two feet on the ground, and the idea of being on the edge of the world, unstable, precarious, on one foot, thus. We speak of precarious balance, a true mise en abîme of this common word. It's no wonder that so many artists depict this stable/unstable point, feeling both grounded and on the edge of the cliff, showing a solid grip on the earth or holding onto a suspended wire. Balance is alignment as much as resistance, it's also a tipping point, an announced fall. It means leaning, exposing oneself, putting oneself in danger; this aptly describes the artist's profession, or rather the approach that progresses through attempts, which is always on a razor's edge, never certain whether the work will succeed, not even whether the work is finished. Balance belongs to sports, to the diver on the edge of the diving board, to the yogi who rigorously aligns his arms and legs while appearing totally contorted; balance must be invented in the weightlessness of space, where it can express the divine, the world held by a single subtle end without falling. In any case, balance is a sign of rigorous discipline, of combined intellectual and physical effort, and the artist's workshop is the springboard where the work is conceived before diving into the water, into the world, by exhibiting it.

What are we hiding, what's behind it? Is what seems robust or victorious the endgame? In their quest for the sensitive, artists place the fragile in the foreground, revealing the truth. They invite us to accept the imperfect, to draw from it the power of the unique. At this moment, everything aligns, the artists open the window, and it's up to us to breathe. Using the refraction of light, Marion Flament reveals the impalpable, questioning strength and stability, challenging our beliefs in the certain and perennial through the unspeakable. With his alphabet, François Mangeol leaves us clues to cultivate our awakening. The survival blanket, symbol of a quest, the stateless flag of humans whose courage has led them to move, exposes the strength beneath the fragility. Capucine Bonneterre introduces us to the hidden side of the labels we wear, their figuration, a consequence of the visible side, teaching us to perceive these hidden vibrations, which we believe to be uncertain. Like a chemist, Clara Claus manifests sensitive perceptions, between introspection and the outside world. Eva-Maria Raab explores the ephemeral, capturing the soul of nature in this map of the USA. Damien Toillon's figures are captured in relaxed postures, with no pressure, the body no longer directed by the mind.

With its air of the extraordinary, the over/natural invites us to discover something beyond nature, a mystery at work in our immediate environment. Could there be artifice at the very heart of nature? Between enchantment and disquiet, the world around us is an inexhaustible source of wonder and artistic inspiration. Romain Bernini and Théophile Brient create ghostly apparitions, and Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil and Marc Couturier even cosmic ones. These strange settings give rise to unusual hybridizations such as those imagined by Max Coulon, which become almost disturbing in the work of Lélia Demoisy. Dazzling, otherworldly lighting by Adrien Couvrat plunges us into the heart of darkness with Charles Le Hyaric and Stéphanie Florin. Suddenly, Pierre Seinturier brings us the cosmic serpent! Jérémie Cosimi invites us to enigmatic rituals, where, as with Céline Foussadier, the human mingles with the vegetable. What secret ceremony are Marion Flament's suspended candles conspiring to perform? And is Kaï-Chun Chang's monochrome rainbow really natural? Setting off fireworks on all sides, the artists open the doors to the over/natural, the better to alert us to the fragility of living things...

The word "manifestation" means "to make manifest, to show". What particularly interests me about this word is the double dynamic it articulates: on the one hand, appearance (a phenomenon that goes beyond the known and is located in the eyes) and on the other, action (movement of the body, the will to change). The first is passive, the second active. And I believe we can go to great lengths to bring about what we first hallucinated. Certain artists have the ability to give us the warning signs of an event, to make us feel the fever growing in our hearts or stomachs: the break in the continuum of things is announced by the irruption of the strange into everyday life. Love at first sight, political or social upheaval, miracles, paranormal phenomena: all these events throw the course of history (big or small) into crisis. This selection - which takes its title from a work by R. Auguste-Dormeil - includes: a carnival turnaround (C. Courgeon), a smoky mess (J. Perez), a magic trick (E. Tholot), a meeting of angels (S. Alfassi), divine intervention (E. M. Largo), a UFO landing (N. Ghali), an explosive trance (P. Gaignard), a dazzling finale (N. Pernisco) or a bit of fairy dust (R. Dini).

The recurrence of images of real or fake screens, windows and frames in photography mirrors the pictorial motif of the window that Matisse, among others, made his own. A space beyond space. A window on the world. In a movement of its own, photography's window-screen device renders pictorial what is real. Now pure light, like Hiromi Sugimoto's drive-in cinemas, these window-screens - over-lit but empty, like the tunnel and billboard photographed by Xavier Dumoulin or Nathan Serny's windows - reflect and reflect the gaze of the observer. The same is true of the untied truck, where Tami Notsani sees "the quality of a mirror that frames and highlights a piece of the view that escapes us". "What escapes us" is a theme in itself. "Ambiguous atmospheres and hollowed-out landscapes", in the words of Siouzie Albiach. Architectures or urban furniture awaiting activation, out of use or out of time, abandoned for a time or forever. Orphaned, vacant, neglected spaces, where an impression of strangeness, sometimes desolation, reigns. An absence that reflects our own, like the blinding light of a screen without an image. Eminently pictorial. Cinematographic.

Color is the essence of painting, the one that creates shadow and light, depth and surface. Used in a realistic way or totally freed from the constraints of the tangible, subtle or radical world, it is a powerful means of expression, a vehicle of unique emotions, governed by our education, our culture, our personal experiences. The very essence of painting, it influences our relationship to the world and feeds our imagination. It builds our gaze and opens up new horizons, like the painting of Olivier Masmonteil, made up of successive strata that are fixed on a landscape, summoning both the notion of movement and a moment that we would have frozen, like a memory. comforting. As powerfully as a melody or a familiar scent, color has the power to transport us instantly. The burning light of the Open Space painted by Marion Bataillard, or the tangy colors of Vanessa Fanuele summon the reminiscences of a summer evening. The canvases of Estavao Mucavele reveal the formal and colorful sensations of the arid landscapes of Mozambique and South Africa, while the mysterious works of Amandine Guruceaga reveal an unexpected alchemy between nature and the hand of man, offering to our eyes the spectacle of new hybrid landscapes.

In 2024, as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition, today's art continues more than ever to honor nature, landscape and, above all, a certain joy of living in today's world, in painting, drawing, printmaking and photography. Agathe May and Frédéric Malette see themselves as guardians of a magical garden that could bring together the work of almost all the artists in this particularly bucolic selection, and where Nijinsky would come to dance "L'après-midi d'un faune" every day. In the work of Maya Inès Touam, Margaux Dehri and Tami Notsani, it is woven from childhood memories, between spring and summer epiphanies and birthday parties. We find the spirit of a Monet, a Renoir or a Matisse in their delicate, sensitive proposals. As in an Alice in Wonderland tale, Cécile Morillon, Marie-Charlotte Urena, Stella Sujin and Sandsky's work is dominated by animals: birds, cats and lambs laze indolently among the most voluptuous flowers. With Siouzie Albiach and Emmanuelle Benjamin, the games are more subtle, between dawn and dusk of a world more fragile than it seems. For this apology for nature in contemporary art is also an apology for a landscape that we must preserve at all costs, at the risk of seeing it disappear before our very eyes. Thank you, artists, for reminding us of this!