Curare programme 2026
Sectors: Inception, Process & Digital
Partnership: French Association of Exhibition Curators (C-E-A)
The CURARE program, run in partnership with C-E-A (Association française des commissaires d'exposition), invites Domitille Bertrand and Lucie Ménard to look at the Inception, Process and Digital sectors. They question contemporary forms of drawing, exploring the way in which drawing today extends beyond its traditional media.
Nourished by reflections and exchanges with artists and their galleries, the program features several formats: a series of questions and answers with a selection of artists, a text analyzing each sector, and two talks with artists from each sector.
Domitille Bertrand, independent curator, Inception sector
What is your greatest challenge as a curator of contemporary art exhibitions?
I'd say it's to achieve the paradox of a sufficiently subterranean trace, on the one hand, to allow that which is perceptible in the studio and in the minds of the artists whose pieces we strive to showcase to their best advantage. On the other hand, it also means defending our profession and the need to match exhibition spaces as closely as possible to this fertile and useful association for the visitor navigating with the works. Another challenge is to work with what is, but also with the whole corpus to come, felt and unhatched, because the curator, like other intermediaries, engages in a discussion to build before the work has come to fruition. For me, working with a form of movement as material is what makes this job so fascinating. The feeling of being on the front line, one of the first translators.
Drawing has traditionally been defined as being on paper. What innovations in contemporary design are you most enthusiastic about?
For me, drawing is a love of line. It seems to me that, while paper retains a fundamental place in its organic link to the artists who touch it, space, volume and emptiness become equally interesting sites for invention. Fiber, installation and immersive configurations also offer a thrilling echo of the sheet, whether as extensions or beginnings. Contemporary drawing is not a sketch of another work, but a trace of a space that literally overturns perspectives. For me, a work like that of Hyacinthe Ouattara, with whom I was lucky enough to collaborate on Organic Mood (2020, a 75m2 immersive textile installation), is the pure enthusiasm of a drawing that invites us to enter into its lines of colored fibers in a very concrete way.
If you were to choose to start a collection of 20th-century drawings, which piece by which artist would you choose?
I'd start by acquiring a work that is precisely not from the period, but contains them all, for what it has to do with the body of civilizations, its anchoring in the classical functions of memory drawing, and the quality of its line as well as that of the vast landscapes in hollow. My first choice is "Epic", by Rada Tzankova. A major work from the very beginning of the 21st century, a modern and timeless displacement of populations, by an artist of Bulgarian origin born in the 20th century. I would go then undoubtedly invite painting into the drawing, or vice versa, with a work by Laure Motreff, before finally concentrating on what the definition expects most: paper and its extensions. For their historical and current features, as much as their plastic value, I'd probably go for the "Le monde perdu" series by Soly Cissé or Sérgio Bello "Cri des peuples". My devotion to the work of artist Sylvia Rhudwould undoubtedly lead me to detours, but more than that, I'd certainly like to propose bridges between artists of the 20th century and other fantastic, and as yet unenlightened, artists of the last ten years, among whom I could mention, for example, the very promising William Jones.
about inception
Inception outlines an axis in which collaborations are an integral mechanism in the creation of works. Drawing and contemporary art are represented with an angle that knows how to recondition the stages of creation. The Gallery Fahmy Malinovsky fleshes out a booth to facilitate the unfolding of a journey of political and social memory, with the protruding work of young Franco-Kurdish artist Bahar Kocabey. A recomposed landscape of memories and historical references, the artist narrates: each element becomes a fragment. "I'm learning to write a word", she says, to "recompose a sentence" in space, and invite the drawing to "contaminate floor and wall". Others engage in an incubating dialogue with the artists they support, for whom they become a tool for reflection, as in the case of the young Galerie Maxime Allain with the draughtswoman Marine. Bikardwho gives a place to the "memory of the body" in his practice of experimental drawing. The form that the works will take is the stage of a larger whole, integrating the theatricalization of gestures as much as the sheet, or the wall.
Several artist duos feature among the proposals in the Inception sector, calling into question the very notion of authorship and exclusive signature as an indissociable marker of the work. This trend invites us to consider gesture as a medium for the final work. Thus, founded by the Constellation association, 12 la Galerie, invites Vassili Stanajic-Petrovic and Briana Bray, who present "La troisième main", a duo in which drawing seems to dance from one medium to another, invoking myths, imaginations and complex fantasies. On the same booth, the duo Kid Kréol & Boogie by Jean-Sébastien Clain and Yannis Nanguet evokes, with poetic fluff, the cultural heritage of Reunion Island, through the mapping of oratories that have become cultural landscapes. Galerie Pauline Renard highlights the symbiotic work of Pauline MARTINET and Zoé TEXEREAU. A CV for two, a Work together. Everything seems to weave an organic, fluid future for drawing. Here, it questions its protagonists, and, through inhabited interiors, approaches a form of intimacy, in the image of Julien. Gorgeartwhose work in reconstructing family memories is equally evocative of "the poetry of the banal".
Last but not least, in addition to the common attractions of the resonance of memories, and the questions posed by several artists on the perception of memory, its integrity and the possible games of recomposition through drawing, like the surprising modern fables by Ken AptekarGalerie Le Clézio's booth, one notion seems to dominate the proposals in the Inception sector. That of considering, in a certain way, space as a plane, and drawing, its outline, as a volume, a flat sometimes, whatever the medium. Richard de Latour and Catherine Danoupresented by Galerie Aziyadé, elaborate the music of planes through juxtapositions of spaces and hollows. Chloé Vanderstraeten, supported by "Traits Libres", invests cut-paper structures, drawn echoes of the leaves and pencils in her corpus. Finally, artists Khaled Takreti and Laila Muraywidon view at the show with Galerie Nadine Fattouhsupport a composed drawing, full of a particularly dense, chiselled plan.
It should be noted that this sector also heralds a wave of optimism in terms of the abundance of solid proposals and relatively new galleries. which, while enriching an already fleshy landscape, can only reassure us as to the activities that may emerge over the next few years.
Biography
Domitille Bertrand is an exhibition curator and trainer. A 2010 graduate of ICART in Paris, she supports artists at the dawn of their careers, as well as more experienced ones. Interested in the plastic arts and their hybridization, she has organized several artistic residencies, four international competitions and curated some forty independent exhibitions in Paris, San Francisco and Dakar. She has also collaborated with independent projects in Geneva and Brazzaville. In 2016, she founded Develop'on, on which D Galerie and D Formations depend. Since 2020, she has been an active member of C-E-A, conducting interviews and regularly participating in the writing of critical texts, in addition to her activities as a trainer and curator.
Artist interviews
La Troisième Main - 12 la galerie
Drawing but not only. What is your artistic practice and how does it fit into a trajectory of personal works works?
The first thing to say is that we are a duo of artists who met at the Beaux-Arts de la Réunion 20 years ago. At the time, each of us came with a personal drawing baggage, our basic practice, which was nurtured and sometimes contradicted during our years of apprenticeship. When La Troisième Main, our joint studio, was created in 2013, drawing emerged as the cement and starting point for all our projects, like a script that is renewed each time, announcing the architecture of the work to come.
You place the medium of drawing where you least expect it, with the superimposing elements to create a space of shapes and forms. meaning, in and of itself. Could you tell us more about what's involved? in your drawing practice?
We could answer individually, as our approaches differ: while Vassili has a figurative relationship with drawing, where representation and the concern for narrative are at the center of his attention, Briana approaches drawing from a rather abstract direction, where the subject is merely a pretext for an often intuitive composition. However, in our joint work, the two approaches intermingle, creating an alliance between these polarities: the figurative/abstract, the planned/intuitive, the subject/motive, but going further to Serbian influences to the north for Vassili and Briana's Madagascan origins to the south, the masculine and the feminine.
How does drawing resonate with your work in general? does it allow you to do, compared to other media?
You could say that drawing is the skeleton and the primary medium, like a language that enables us to understand each other with a third party. Because we're also tattoo artists and create frescoes for clients, in this type of professional relationship, drawing is like an interface that opens up all the ideas our clients bring us for their bodies in the case of tattoos, or their locations for frescoes, and drawing is the intermediary phase that helps shape the image we're looking for. Only once the sketches have been validated can we move on to the final medium, which is the dermograph or brush. However, when we welcome people into our studio, we like to say that we draw on lots of different media, be it sheets, skin or walls.
At Drawing Now, you will be exhibiting with 12 la Galerie.can you tell us more about the works to be exhibited at the show and and give some pointers as to why these particular selections were made? for these particular selections?
We make sure we challenge ourselves with things we're not used to doing for each of the exhibition contexts to which we're invited, not just for the sake of the challenge, but also to fit in as closely as possible with the problematic of the event. This time, we decided to highlight the generally hidden phase of drawing prior to painting. For several years now, we've been learning about traditional painting - Byzantine icons for Vassili and Persian miniatures for Briana - which has led each of us to redefine the modes of representation and symbolic significance of the images we create. For Drawing Now, we chose to reinterpret the myth of Sisyphus and his punishment dictated by the gods, consisting of pushing a stone up a mountain, which, reaching its peak, would fall back down eternally. What we like here is the psychological aspect of this myth, in which Sisyphus ends up finding a virtue in this punishment, which then becomes for him the condition for revelation of the Way to liberation, a form of sublimation. The symbolic aspect was also a determining factor, because on Reunion Island, as in many parts of the world, the mountain is a living entity, a distant echo of the animist cults of which we are all children. In "Piton Sizif", the name and the aesthetic reflect a constantly evolving crossbreeding where man and mountain unite in a language whose beauty lies in the unfinished.
Vincent Richard de Latour - AZIADE Gallery
Drawing but not only. What is your artistic practice and how does it fit into an evolving trajectory of personal works?
Color is at the heart of my artistic practice. I explore the interplay of full and empty, constantly seeking balance in my compositions. The juxtaposition and superimposition of shapes and colors create depth, inviting a progressive reading of the work. This research is part of an evolving process, in which each work extends previous experiments, while opening up new plastic avenues in line with my primary passion for textile art.
You place the medium of drawing where you least expect it, with the superimposing elements to create a space of shapes and forms. meaning, in and of itself. Could you tell us more about what's involved? in your drawing practice?
My background in the world of fashion and textiles is a profound source of inspiration for my artistic practice. Drawing appears through sewing, which gives rhythm and links elements together. Thread acts like a line drawn on paper, building a structure, a weft. Drawing also involves the search for motif, notably through the use of monotype, which enriches this vocabulary by providing additional material and a dynamic made up of imprints, variations and accidents. The combination of these gestures and techniques creates my own personal creative space.
How does drawing resonate with your work in general? does it allow you to do, compared to other media?
As Matisse said of his papiers découpés, "I draw directly in color". In my work, drawing is freed from the traditional tool: it's my fingers that tear the paper, engaging the body and the material. My gesture is both instinctive and mastered, revealing shapes born of chance as much as intention.
At Drawing Now, you will be exhibiting with AZIADE gallery.can you tell us more about the works to be exhibited at the show and and give some pointers as to why these particular selections were made? for these particular selections?
The exhibition was built in two stages. Like two complementary breaths. The first series, entitled Paysages tissés (Woven Landscapes), comprises ten weavings in which paper and thread are intertwined. The drawing takes shape in the material itself: the stitching structures the surface, giving rhythm to the fragments and bringing out textural and graphic effects. These works evoke soils worked by man, such as ploughed fields, and evoke a profoundly earthy, almost archaic relationship with nature. Presented together, they form a fragmented landscape, in which each work functions as a motif, while at the same time proposing an overall reading. The second part, Strates, is also an evocation of the ground, but this time built around the notion of layers. It appeals to the geological imagination as well as to that of memory, through a play of successive superimpositions. Emotional layers" are deposited and partially revealed, revealing contrasts of color and form. The combination of different formats forms an ensemble akin to a recomposed landscape, where each piece functions as a trace, a suspended moment. The structure is also punctuated by wefts of colored paper and thread, evoking an imaginary cartography, a sensitive territory.
Ken Aptekar - Le Clezio Gallery
Drawing but not only. What is your artistic practice and how does it fit into an evolving trajectory of personal works?
I don't'never été véruly a virtuoso draughtsman. My strong points have always been été painting and graphics - layout, typography and visual communication. For me, drawing is above all a tool for thinking. ée. It allows me to clarify what I want to express in a œuvre, deécover how to transmit idées et éétions que j'espère share with the viewer. I usually start with a quick sketch and a few notes on a yellow pad. - more scribbles and reminders than'a " drawing " à strictly speaking.
Often, my point of départ is my réaction à a œuvre source précise — récently, an illuminated manuscripté médiéval. But for many years ées, il s'plutôt de peintures historiques vues dans les musées, qui faisaient émerger for me of thematicécontemporary mathematics. As part of 'commissioned exhibitionsées par des institutions muséales, j'invited visitors à observe and à réact à from œworks from the permanent collections. I 'I would then rely on theiréponses pour interpréter les peintures qu'they évoquaient et créer de nouvelles œrelated textual works. Finally, the œworks from the collection and my " collaborations " with the public éwereésentées ensemble.
Today'Today, illuminated manuscriptsés, with their complexitiesés précious similarities à of the jewels, are Conservatorsés in musées et des bibliothèthe form of enclosed pages, which can be used toées in enclosed volumes. These institutions make them ésormais accessibles grâthis à photos en très résolution, easilyéonline. I feel like a child in a toy store. The global world of illuminated manuscripts és became my playground. C'is like browsing the shelves of a'une bibliothèwhen I consult the digital collections, for example.ériques at BnF or the Morgan Library & Museum. The id ées surgissent spontanément. C'is an invaluable source oféof fascination, and an exhilarating journey to a pasté far away. It m'However, there are times when we are looking forélibéréa manuscript — or more — likely to support an idée précise que je souhaite dévelop. From sketch to yellow block à a sheet of Arches paper, I définishes more préciséthe manière which I am going to déployer les éléI want to combine: text, shapes taken from the résocial networks or messaging, calligraphy, color, patterns, etc.écoratifs, lettrines historiées, feuilles d'gold or'money. I arrange them on the sheet in pencil, and then I 'y transferèoften uses images à l'éscale and reworkées in Photoshop, à From'impressions of'œuvres décovered online. If adjustments are nécessesaires, j'erases and modifies. Then, when I feel s ûr of the composition, j'encre le dessin préparatory pencil drawing, adding moreégèvariations. This is followed by gouache, the laying of the mixtion for the d 'gold, and calligraphy.
You place the medium of drawing where you least expect it, with the superimposing elements to create a space of shapes and forms. meaning, in and of itself. Could you tell us more about what's involved? in your drawing practice?
I have always considered myselféré as a conceptual artist using paint. My fascination with 'history of painting — which includes drawing, painting and illumination — m'led, in theé1970s, à looking for a way to keep the painting alive. À this époque, painting était frénoisily and loudlyéclarée " dead »in favor of new médias: photography, videoéo, performance, or the'conceptual art free of painting. What could I do, if I 'étais assez obstiné - ou assez naïf - to want to continue à paint? I had to find a way to give à my potential audience, as well as'to the'a reason to continue à s'intéresser à painting. J 'I understood that the way forward was to focusée aux réponsons contemporéby old paintings. J 'ai then intégré these réponses — mine and others — fromèexplicitly, as part of the œuvres que je réalis.
J'ai éalso became aware à this époque that the hiéthat place painting at the top and drawing at the bottom. à base, such as'they exist in museumsées, n'made no sense to me. Who could s érieusement affirmer qu'un dessin de Watteau est inférieur à a painting by n'any maîancient treasure? To affirm this position, I 'ai réalisé paintings à l'oil'après des dessins de maîWatteau's works, adding my own texts, gravés on glass and fixés to the paintings. These DESSINS paintings - I dared to suggestéto the viewer - étaient-elles moins précieuses que mes peintures de PEINTURES?
Thus, abolishing hiérarchy between painting and drawing, placing them on the same même plan d'égalitéis for me the'for me.
How does drawing resonate with your work in general? does it allow you to do, compared to other media?
I considerèdrawing as a bulwark against à the domination of digitalérique. Also pr écis that I'to make the éléments dessinés dans mes manuscrits, ils trahissent toujours l'humanité of my hand. I can draw a line tr ès straight, but it will never be as straight as'a line produced mécaniquement, numérially. In this sense, the drawing presents éserves and manifests the most direct link with me as a'êhuman being. This effect is well s ûr éalso perceptible in the'use of the brush. But for this artist, images begin with a drawing, to which the brush is then added. 'add the paint, the'ink or foil'or. Stage fright é of the lines is theépart de l'œuvre and, à as such, is the'élément. J 'add that I considerècalligraphy, fundamentally, as a form of drawing.
At Drawing Now, you will be exhibiting with Le Clézio Gallery.can you tell us more about the works to be exhibited at the show and and give some pointers as to why these particular selections were made? for these particular selections?
Knowing that I préa small collection of illuminated manuscriptsés, j'ai décidé d'in réalize six, so that'a sélection can être opérée and'she tésign of the'éof the possibilitiesés théand graphics à this extraordinary kind of'œworks on paper. I wanted éalso show œworks featuringéféexplicit references à historical sources, but also'others who do not'claim any — conserving a simple appearance médiésufficient to produce the'incongruousé that I am looking for, in particular through the'introduction of contemporary forms from the réand messaging.
He'importait d'y inclure des thèmes politiques urgents, de l'humour, as well as moments of'intimate introspection. I wanted éAlso that the sélection reflèto the vast diversityé géography of illuminated manuscriptsés à and is not limited to the chrissian corpus alone.éof the'Western Europe.
Lucie Ménard, independent curator, Process and Digital sectors
What is the biggest challenge for you as a curator of contemporary art exhibitions?
In a context of visual over-solicitation, I'm particularly interested in how to succeed in producing a framework - theoretical, spatial, temporal - that gives each work the attention it needs, and invites us to take our time. A curatorial project can also be developed in ways other than the classic exhibition format (publications, thematic cycles, websites, workshops, etc.). The role of curator seems to me to be crucial in bringing together multiple perspectives, which go beyond the sensitive experience of the work to enhance our view of the world and complicate our representations, in order to envisage other forms of sensibility and narratives. In an image-centric society, the gaze is political: what we choose to see or not to see, to look at, to show. It can be difficult to allow ourselves to marvel in the current context, but I'm very attached to this notion of wonder, the act of creation as a driving force for hope, action and transformation.
Drawing has traditionally been defined as being on paper. What innovations in contemporary drawing are you most excited about?
I find it fascinating to see how new technologies can augment and complement the possibilities of drawing, giving shape to ideas that would previously have been impossible to implement. I'm thinking, for example, of the work A main levée by artist Pauline de Chalendar, whose initial mediums were drawing and animation. Her dream of "drawing in the air" was realized at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, through the development of a virtual reality digital drawing device in collaboration with a scientific laboratory, tailor-made for her practice thanks to a motion sensor attached to her hand. A VR headset then enabled us to follow his gestures, and discover the line of the drawing gradually taking shape around us. I find this particularly relevant when the deployment is justified by a strong poetic intention, and is not entirely digital but retains an element of plasticity, in a back-and-forth between the materiality and immateriality of drawing.
If you were to choose to start a collection of 20th-century drawings, which piece by which artist would you choose?
Hard to choose just one, but probably a drawing from Léo Lionni's "La botanique parallèle", a deceptively scientific book in which he describes and draws imaginary plants, like those that are only visible when photographed. He is also the author of the marvellous drawings and collages that illustrate his children's books, which had a big impact on me when I was growing up. The collection could then be continued with a drawing by the artist Anna Zemánková, featured in many art brut collections, who imagines colorful plants by mixing pastels, textile cut-outs, embroidery and perforations in paper. And if we go back further, a rubbing by Max Ernst from his "Histoire naturelle" series. What these artists have in common is a great deal of freedom in the materials and drawing techniques they use, starting from a careful observation of the world to bring their inner visions to life. A fine start to a collection!
about the process & digital sectors
Où starts the drawing and où s'arrêt it? Can êsometimes with a look at the'inconsidéré. With its lines déhitéths désormais dotées d'a shadowBenoît Félix invites us à observe the " almost-nothing " designseemingly offer a résistance douce aux images générées. In a number of works in the Process and Digital sectorsblack, white, and lshades of gray dominate. Does color déservesé in réponse à a visual overloadas ua way to rest our looks ? Several Process s'anchored in a report matrix to images. Their démarche has something of the'extraction archéological extraction, in a context markedé context marked by the multiplicité flows that assail us. Visit fantômy d'other images are thus convenedés, à through gestures andémarches réparators and restorers (Guénaëlle de Carbonnières, Luján Péground floorSarah Navasse). Paper is like a skin, absorbing and restoring pastels, pigments, graphite, ink, or m ême lumièlight, in the case of photosensitive paper.
A l'of these images between maelström and palimpsest, d'other work plunge us into the silence of'urban or natural environments (Laure Tixier, Isidora Villarino, Amélie Royer). Science fiction s'invite as a means of résistance, in order to'imagine'other futures and représentations; artefacts of'an imaginary civilization (Aïcha Snoussi) à an encyclopédie of parallel life formsèles (Golnaz Behrouznia).
The four artists présmellés in the Digital sector combine à them the'use of'numerical toolsériques à a deep practiceément ancrée in body and matterère. Michel Paysant uses the 'occulométrie to record the trajectory of his gaze as it follows the contours of the végérate réels or painted by Claude Monet. Chez Eveline Boulva émachines also replace or complementèthe hand, but never the'œil of the'artist. A énum cutterérique customisée whose blade has été replacementéa pencil serves him so wellôt à plot images on paper - vectoris photographséglaciers à difféor à making stencils and filling in the blanks à l'watercolor or with'clay extracted from representative landscapesésmellés.
For Ruben Bellinkx, the matte designérializes a vision a flight of crows and the synchronization of'a group of drones in a worriedéaunt chorégraphics, which will be filmedés afterès a production process lasting several yearsées. L'use of 16mm supports l'importance that these images have réitment existé. A l'Conversely, Orianne Castel's'is the firstère étap that is numérique; définish and test the complex composition of the drawings à coming, composés of two superimposed imagesées. Dhe masses color are d'first tracées with a finger on the'application " Photo " of its téléphone, matérializing forms à plot à l'help from'a visual alphabet derived from élépaint's constituent parts : carré frame, lraster lines, ch crossesâssis. On paper, the two images resemble each otherévèlent dans une dentelle de signes tracés en différentes nuances de gris.
The Process and Digital sectors give à hybrid designé deepéa hybrid design that is deeply alive and more human than ever, in which the'the use of new technologies enables artists to make their process more complex and to'the field of possibilities, but never as a substitute for à a body that thinks, looks and feels.
Biography
Lucie Ménard is an independent curator and a 2019 graduate of the Curatorial studies post-graduate program at KASK - School of Arts (Ghent, Belgium). Since 2012, she has also been in charge of educational and cultural services at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing. Alongside Lieselotte Egtberts, Elisa Maupas and Anna Stoppa, Lucie Ménard is one of the co-founders of moss, a cross-border curatorial collective at the crossroads of Belgium, France, Italy and the Netherlands. In 2022, the collective won a research grant from the Institut pour la photographie de Lille for the project Deal with it - Esthétiques de la réparation. Nourished by the dynamic between these different activities, Lucie Ménard is particularly interested in plastic gestures as acts of care, the back-and-forth between materiality and digital images in contemporary practices, the intersecting temporalities at play in creative processes, and the tension between attention(s) and distraction(s) in the way we look at works.
Artist interviews
Aïcha Snoussi, Galerie La La Lande
In your practice, is drawing the beginning or the end? Is it at the center or the periphery?
Drawing is the primary gesture, it's at the heart of my practice and takes different forms depending on what I'm doing: there are the intimate and meticulous forms of drawing on old notebooks, a drawing-writing in the form of long handwritten scrolls, archives of drawings worked as organic matter on canvas, or large-scale frescoes. In its most intuitive form, this gesture is intimately linked to the paper I use. For some years now, I've hardly drawn on blank sheets of paper. I collect a range of aged papers, old notebooks, the dry texture and ochre tones inviting me to leave my mark. The gesture is the same whether I'm sketching for installations, sculptural pieces or a series where drawing is the object of the project, like the Carnets de Lattara that I'm showing at Drawing Now. All these forms drawn in ink, with pigments, with tools as varied as the Qalam, the pen, fingers, matches, or manufactured objects are part of a single language that I've been developing over the last few years.
What do you hybridize drawing with in your work?
First of all, drawing hybridizes with fiction. For several years now, I've been working with fake
remains of a civilization whose traces I've been exhuming, and drawing on paper has been the raw material for this project. The encounter or discovery of a paper object (notebooks, a roll of textured wallpaper) is an integral part of this process, as it awakens in me this archeological impulse. Just a few days ago, I found an old ream of yellowed blue-green paper in the shelves of an abandoned cellar that used to be the storage area of an old goods station. This discovery passionately inspired me to embark on a new project. Diverting paper from its original use is an almost obsessive gesture. This obsession with drawing also manifests itself in installation and sculpture projects: the notebooks were initially presented as wall, floor and earth installations, but over time I noticed that when I manipulated other materials such as glass or oxidized steel, the drawing was omnipresent, like a skin you can't get rid of. I work with volumes in the same way I work with drawing, by intuition, by addition, by line. As a result, drawings
made a few years ago resemble recent sculptural pieces: writing, organic forms, the color of rust, deranged machines, systems of bodies, arms and scrap metal entangled in a network.
Can you tell us about your artistic process and the tools used in the works presented in this year's Process section?
I present two drawing projects: one on old studio notebooks, the other on a roll of
wallpaper worked in reverse. I've been developing these practices for several years, and they are closely linked to the fiction that runs through my work. Carnets d'atelier is a travel format. I produced several in Benin, at the Fondation Zinsou, where they were presented in a site-specific installation: a room in the museum had been covered with red earth. The drawings were placed on a structure of bricks fashioned from this earth, while on the wall I drew with an ink obtained by mixing the earth with various quantities of water. I continued this work at the Lattara archaeological site, using a burnt black wool ink, applied with burnt match sticks to form thicker or thinner points. The notebooks were displayed in showcases replicated from those in the Musée Henri-Prades, in dialogue with recovered, engraved or diverted objects. It's this series that I'm showing today as relics under glass. I'm also exhibiting a manuscript scroll made from various inks. This piece is indicative of a practice I'm very fond of,
that of reworking works of art. This monomania for drawing means that I find it hard to consider a piece finished; I stop for the time it takes to exhibit it, and then it sometimes becomes matter again. In this scroll, there is fiction: that of an artifact inspired by scientific or esoteric Arabic manuscripts, where drawing and indecipherable writing participate in the same language, but there is also the sedimentation of passages. The black ink drawings are older, while those in burnt black wool and red ink were added later. This is the first time I've presented this work in this form, as there is a part hanging on the wall, and a piece of the same scroll under glass. I like the idea of being able to re-articulate this
work in space and time, and it also raises the question of the presentation of archaeological pieces in museums: the authority of the device, like that of the display case, already places the object in a preciousness, a relative importance. I find it amusing to play on these codes with the same two parts of the same drawing.
Stone, Paper or Scissors? What are they?
Pierre. It's the first material I've collected, ever since childhood. I have a fascination for stones that only manifests itself subtly in my work. They're on my work table, in the workshops I've visited, on the periphery of installations where they seem anecdotal. It was only in Benin that their place was at the center of a major installation at the Jardin d'Essai in Ouidah, a journey of over a kilometer around six large granite stones, the okutas, from the hills of Dassa-Zoumé. Echoing their history as protectors of the Idashaa people during slavery, each stone here is linked to a fictitious ritual forming a path of initiation into the Tchech civilization, transmitted orally by guides. I also created a sculpture on shell limestone following training with a sculptor in the Montpellier region, but this attempt was never followed up. It remains suspended in an imaginary world that may one day take other forms.
Benoît Félix - EVA STEYNEN GALLERY
In your practice, is drawing the beginning or the end? Is it at the center or the periphery?
In my practice, everything starts with a field phase: observation, immersion, collecting images and perceptions.
Then, in the studio, drawing takes over - and plays a central role. As soon as the photographs taken in the field are analyzed, drawing comes into play: it structures, orients and interprets. Its vast expressive possibilities enable me to imagine visual languages in their own right, making it a sensitive and essential tool for translating the territory. Its ability to navigate between artistic expression, cartographic trace and analytical gesture opens up a wide field of exploration in terms of the forms that the image can take: in graphic choices (line, rhythm, movement, density) as well as in media, supports and formats.
Drawing thus acts as a creative motor, a sensitive filter through which I seek to restore the complexity, but also the singularity, of the places I survey.
What do you hybridize drawing with in your work?
Throughout the creative process, the drawing maintains a constant relationship with the photographic image, which acts, among other things, as a memory of the referential place.
Except in the case of an entirely traditional drawing, the first sketches take shape from the computer graphics processing of images captured in the field. The production of the works is then based on an alliance between the automation of drawing (using a digital cutter transformed into a plotter) and traditional approaches, in order to introduce a sensitive dimension into a programmed, digital process. It is the media themselves (graphite, ink, watercolor...) and the succession of artistic choices they imply - including certain unforeseen phenomena - that seem to me to give the image its material presence and uniqueness.
Finally, printmaking is also an important reference: the idea of the matrix, layered work, the use of stencils and gestures of alteration are often hybridized with drawing in my projects.
Can you tell us about your artistic process and the tools used for the works presented in this year's Digital section?
The crossover between media and technological tools is part of a broader research project on territory and landscape.. I see them as places to survey and observe, but also as places of tension, subject to profound transformations. The works presented at Drawing Now explore, through the medium of drawing, ideas of dislocation, alteration and disappearance, which appeal to me. They evoke, both poetically and critically, certain upheavals linked to climate change, such as the accelerated fragmentation of ice.
The two main drawings I'll be presenting are part of a series entitled Writing a memory. Seal Cove, Newfoundland - June 9, 2019 . This set includes a total of five representations of the same iceberg photographed that day.. While I was documenting it, part of the mass broke off, causing it to topple over, slowly drifting fragments of ice, then restabilizing itself. The works retrace this unforeseen moment and the changes it brought about in the form and perception of the iceberg.
To create the drawings, I combined digital tools with traditional media. After processing and vectorizing the images, the files are sent to a digital cutter that I've modified: the blade is replaced by a graphite pencil. The machine's software controls several parameters, including the pressure exerted on the paper. It's one of the key elements for generating a wide range of grays, by gradually building up the image, one "layer" at a time.
This process is important to me: it puts digital, reproducible writing in tension with the organic, singular character of graphite. Visual glitches and irregularities (sometimes intentional, sometimes inherent to the technology) become an integral part of the image. The choice of graphite, both sober and dense, reinforces this refined atmosphere and the northern nature of the referential territory. It strikes a delicate balance between the utopia of absolute technological control and the observation of unforeseen alterations.
Stone, Paper or Scissors? What are they?
Definitely stone.
Stone | mineral | territory: where it all begins, where I walk, what I live by. What inspires me, what resonates with me in creation.
Stone | mineral | rock: the one I found at the very beginning of my stay in Newfoundland, in 2019. Black, smooth, perfectly suited to the palm of my hand. It has become a workshop tool: for transferring, smoothing, holding, stabilizing. It is also an object of memory: of a place, a moment.
Stone | mineral | graphite: my favorite medium of expression, for its specific gray, its ability to echo thought, both in the fine modulation of the line and in the deployment of an infinity of tones.
Eveline Boulva - Chiguer Contemporary Art Gallery
In your practice, is drawing the beginning or the end? Is it at the center or the periphery?
When I go into the studio, I say "I'm going to draw". The drawing is the starting point, or rather the line, the starting line. I may not have been able to pursue this line to the point where it would have shown the thing in its place, of which it would then have been no more than the outline (fading away for it). It's as if I'd stopped there to begin with. It's as if I had seen in this first stroke - or even first touch, or stain - the possibility of drawing itself - its horizon? Line - and then milkI say to myself (to the point of betray). Or else spot. Paint is a stain that is spread out in front of your eyes. "Noli me tangere", painting tells us. Don't touch me. It keeps us at a distance, respectful of it. And it's as if my work stemmed from the fact that I didn't respect this distance: I wanted to seize the object that the image gave me to see, by forbidding me to touch it. I cut out the line that was supposed to be the starting point of a drawing (did I want to seize the horizon?) - I put the image on the wall. out of it. "Not the image of a thing, the thing of an image".I thought. So the game is to produce this thing? My object drawings are returners from the place of the imageI say to myself, they come to haunt and tempt the space of the person standing in front of them, rejected outside - in front of what? in front of not falling into the trap, and thus seeing that painting is always something that makes a stain in the picture too. So my drawings are passages? "Drawings that are not drawings because they are sculptures, but sculptures that are not sculptures because they are drawings.". They are these beats. A mania or way of making spaces play with each other - let's say of the image / from body / but also language... These questions, part of the drawing process, I bring back into play with images (image-objects), objects, videos, video-actions, gesture-actions...
What do you hybridize drawing with in your work?
Branches, dried grasses that I bundle up and call "branches". Little pieces of nothing found, picked up. Certain features of the exhibition space are sometimes visually activated by the proximity of a work, which then becomes its interpreter. Sometimes it's the work of another artist. Sometimes it's a gesture: a video-gesture, or even a gesture altogether - some drawings, with the handles they end with, call out to the viewer to grasp them... The viewer is then the interpreter.
Can you tell us about your artistic process and the tools used in the works presented in this year's Process section?
Drawings in a few strokes or spots, which I then extend in pencil with lines ending in a loop or knot, or even a handle - or which will appear caught in nets, also drawn. These drawings will then have been cut out (sometimes tediously), and will be stretched by pins in front of the wall, or even between the wall and the floor, or in the corner of two walls, like traps, eye-traps (at the very least). They may be mistaken for their cast shadows (sometimes it's their shadows that cast them). My drawings are the means found for these strokes, tracings or stains (which come to make just the difference with the white of the paper, to begin with), to cling to the walls or floor on their own - in the end, they're just these solutions found to hold on. They may look fragile to the eye, but the paper on which they're traced is of the same kind as those tear-proof paper bracelets they put around our wrists at festival entrances. I see each of my object-drawings as a piece in a game that can be played by several people, and the exhibitions are the space for this game - a space of tension in which the visitor's body sometimes finds itself caught up too. I like the idea that, led and constrained by the presence of these "objects" in tension in the space, the visitor's body is transformed into that of a dancer...
Stone, Paper or Scissors? What are they?
Paperbecause the white surface of a sheet of paper seems to me to be the place where an image can be produced.
Scissors (or cutter), for short cuts.
PierreThen, if necessary, to make it hold, to put it in tension in space, to give body to what, taken from the image, has fallen to begin with, under the effect of the law of gravity.
Laure Tixier - ANALIX FOREVER
In your practice, is drawing the beginning or the end? Is it at the center or the periphery?
While my work begins with research and surveys based on readings, archives and encounters, it crystallizes and takes shape through drawing. This form is autonomous, not reducible to what has preceded it or what may follow. The drawing confirms the network of conceptual, political and poetic intentions, while at the same time resisting and escaping them.
It often unfolds in a series, or may be a fragment of a larger story.
Sculptures and installations may emerge from the drawing, but this is not always the case.
What do you hybridize drawing with in your work?
Drawings hybridize with architecture, housing and urban planning. It unfolds narratives about the social systems they contain and their links to the living world.
Can you tell us about your artistic process and the tools used in the works presented in this year's Process section?
The Process section of Drawing Now will feature a series of watercolors, as well as rugs made in collaboration with a community of weavers in Laghouat, Algeria. On the one hand, solitary drawings on paper in color, and on the other, black-and-white tracings drawn from archives and then transposed to textile know-how. These are drawings on the vegetable fibers of paper or in the thickness of the animal fibers of wool.
Stone, Paper or Scissors? What are they?
Stone, paper and scissors.
Stone for its link to architecture and geology
Paper, the one made of hemp for my watercolours
Scissors, those used for weaving my knotted rugs.