“The Abyss” and other pre-revolutionary Russian posters.

Though anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the history of movie posters and/or graphic design knows some of the glories of Soviet poster design (like the work of the Stenberg Brothers, whom I wrote about last year), pre-revolutionary Russian poster design is much less well-known. Susan Pack’s out-of-print Taschen treasure-chest Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde is the bible for Soviet movie poster design, but it concentrates on the work of the 1920s and 30s, so I was pleased to receive a brand new coffee-table book called Russian Film Posters 1900-1930, (though the posters in the book actually range from 1908-1935), which includes not only over 100 full-page posters from the 1920s by the Stenbergs, Rodchenko, Lavinsky, Prusakov et al, but also over 40 posters from the the 1910s.

Influenced primarily by Art Nouveau, whose curves and swirls would soon be tossed out in favor of the geometrics of Constructivism, these early posters are fascinating, though aesthetically a mixed bag, some of them quite crude in execution. 

In her introduction to the book, cultural historian Maria-Christina Boerner writes that the birth of Russian cinema exhibition came when Vladimir Romashkov projected his ten-minute film Stenka Razin—recognized as the first Russian narrative film—to the public in 1908. The well-known caricaturist Paul Asaturov designed a poster for the film based on the format of the traditional Russian pictorial broadsheet known as the “lubok,” a print style in existence since the late 17th century which is often seen as the precursor to the modern comic strip.

A sorceress helps Elena to bewitch a beloved man, so Satan arranges a marriage for them. Later, Elena falls in love with another man and, again thanks to the witch, her husband dies, and Elena marries her new darling. However, the ghost of her late husband haunts her and she, not being able to stand it, dies herself.

Only 23 minutes of the film preserved, but, according to production notes, the film had numerous creepy and daring elements, including Satan in the disguise of a priest conducting a wedding ritual.

Inspired by Denmark’s Nordisk films, Abyss is a tragic story of love and deceit in which the main heroine ends up drowning herself.

Directors: Yakov Protazanov and Georgii Azagarov

Sin, co-directed with Azagarov, is considered to be part of Protazanov’s “demonic” drama period, which also includes his more famous films Satan Triumphant (1917) and The Queen of Spades (1916). All these films were made in collaboration with Joseph Ermoliev, producer and a prominent figure in the Russian cinema industry of the Imperial era.

In other news, Rick Owens Fall 2021 fashion show. On the subject of underthings, the pentagram briefs from the January men’s show reappeared here wrapped around evening clutches, the implication being that these alien females had handled the “unhinged male aggression” that those briefs signified.

A selection of pre-revolutionary artwork from a new book of Russian Film Posters. 

CREEPY EROTIC MOVIE POSTERS OF LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA

The Hyde's Asylum is a desire to create whose red thread is the impact of contrast, a clash of colours in which pink is a major colour, the dialogue between black and white, placidity and rage. A confrontation of multiple unconventional techniques is created during a painting to propose images that are surrealist and that want to be emotionally centered around the portrait and its interpretation. Highlight the visible and hidden part of things, the message is often in the movement and violence of the stab wound and accentuated in a single detail of expression. The images are simultaneously dark and disturbing, beautiful and repulsive, with various unattractive techniques used to denature and reinterpret images that openly defy assumptions of current beauty.

The Hyde's Asylum: Highlight the visible and hidden part of things, the message is often in the movement and violence of the stab wound and accentuated in a single detail of expression. The images are simultaneously dark and disturbing, beautiful and repulsive, with various unattractive techniques used to denature and reinterpret images that openly defy assumptions of current beauty.

THE HYDE'S ASYLUM: PEINTRE PORTRAITISTE EXPRESSIONNISTE

Parisian photographer, self-taught and passionate, I now spend most of my time behind the lens. I was an actress for a long time, but I found in photography, the most suitable medium to express myself and communicate my visions. I like using lights, contrasts, colours, playing with the elements. For me, photography is a tribute to the Earth, support for contemplation, the path to escape, the dream. I try to transmit the poetry, the tenderness, that Nature inspires me. I like photos that create an expectation, that engage the viewer to imagine a story; these images where reality flickers, where the image becomes a dream. That’s why I sometimes use the double exposure technique. I work in digital and film; I very often use a pinhole, precisely; this device allows me to avoid reality.

"I try to transmit the poetry, the tenderness, that Nature inspires me. I like photos that create an expectation, that engage the viewer to imagine a story; these images where reality flickers, where the image becomes a dream. That’s why I sometimes use the double exposure technique."

FRANÇOISE CHADELAS: PHOTOGRAPHY IS A TRIBUTE TO THE EARTH

For about ten years now, I have been creating paintographies. As its name suggests, a paintography is a mixture of painting and photography.

From photography, I keep the initial shot, an essential and unavoidable basis for the work to come. I also retain, despite all the successive manipulations carried out afterward on the computer, the precision, finesse and plastic quality that certainly distinguish it from painting other than hyper-realistic. However, a paintography is not a photograph, it is a plastic construction that raises doubts in the eyes, that raises the question of the nature of the image that is offered to the eyes of the spectators. What part of the work was captured by the objective, what part recreated by the software work, what part brought by the acrylic glazes?

Layers, layers, stacks: despite its extreme readability, a paintography is a complex construction, based on a succession of screens. The fabric or skin never appears naked, they are always covered by a material that is as much a screen as it is a body with them. This matter is itself obscured by squares that seem either to detach from it or to deepen within it; by evoking the pixels at the base of any digital image, these squares remind us that this matter is a decoy, that it is virtual. And yet, in the works in mixed technique, it is precisely these squares that appear in relief on the surface of the canvas, in a strange transparent materiality.

Layers, layers, stacks: despite its extreme readability, a paintography is a complex construction, based on a succession of screens. The fabric or skin never appears naked, they are always covered by a material that is as much a screen as it is a body with them. This matter is itself obscured by squares that seem either to detach from it or to deepen within it; by evoking the pixels at the base of any digital image, these squares remind us that this matter is a decoy, that it is virtual.

Latvian designer Vladislav Lakshe has gone from his first experiment in combining academic art and street sports to becoming one of the world's top basketball artists. His work is bought by NBA stars, and dozens of clubs, tournaments, and leagues around the world turn to him for his signature style.

Vladislav Lakshe is a professional graphic artist. He holds a master's degree in graphic design from the Academy of Fine Arts and works mostly in drawing and 3D animation and other graphic projects. The aim of the graphics is to maximize detail and generalize form with minimal use of light. Hardly anyone draws such parallels these days. Graphics has grown up and moved into computer graphics. The basis remained the same: classic drawing, engraving, lithography, drawing on stone, melting in metal. Graphics, as opposed to painting, allows one to do anything.

Vladislav Lakshe trained as a child at Janis Rozental Secondary Art School. Later, at the Academy of Arts in Latvia. Lakshe's paintings have been exhibited in Riga and elsewhere in Europe. These days Lakshe participates in international shows. Alongside exhibitions, he enjoys creating designs for sports tournaments as he does it himself and creates characters for computer games. He used to love playing PC games and living the lives of characters. Now he can create them himself.

Lakshe is interested in sculpting, drawing, although it sounds suspicious, as there is an opinion that one can't do everything, it's difficult to be the best in all areas of activity. What an artist likes about art is that it has no boundaries. An artist can be compared to a scientist. If he immerses himself in the subject of painting the forest, his paintings become better, more natural and more absolute. Lakshe is more into figurative compositions and conceptual art - provoking people, making jokes about contemporary life, current subjects in society. The artist has enjoyed this since his first year at the Academy. His grandfather used to be a military prosecutor and introduced Lakshe to a variety of literature: Nekrasov, Gogol, Dostoevsky and various encyclopedias. Lakshe watched, learned Soviet art through literature and through his grandfather's friends - drawing teachers. When he applied for the Academy of Fine Arts, he was already a poster artist. He even did his graduate work as a poster artist - a series of five titled Beat the Paintings with Graphics. It was a protest against painting, and posters were put up all over the academy.

Vladislav Lakshe has many projects in Russia. At this moment, Lakshe became the head artist of VTB league of Student Basketball Association and decorated his first hall in MSU. All basketball halls in the universities, which are members of the Association, will have banners with Lakshe's drawings. Lakshe has already worked with Nike, Adidas, NBA and now he is in the top 12 best sports artists in the world. The artist has had three exhibitions in Singapore, San Francisco and Tokyo with his basketball artwork. On this occasion, Lakshe has been invited to lecture in Russia and talk about the need for art in sports and the theory of sports tournament design, based on the artist's personal experience.

Vladislav Lakshe is all about passion, the great joy of life, and the flaming desire to live. Passion as a symptom of being alive, craving to live and the aspiration to create. Lakshe Passion is a story where ideas are interacting with imagination. Slogans, lines, and strokes unite in a dynamic way to achieve a common goal.

VLADISLAV LAKSHE: THE FLAMING DESIRE TO LIVE

Andrea Galad is an Italian photographer and professional dancer, now living and working as visual artist and choreographer in Berlin, since 2014. Galad began photographing in 2009 with a modest reflex, a white wall as a background, a window as a source of light, and friends improvised as models; all simple elements enhanced by peculiar influences such greek mythology and victorian literature; a deep visceral connection with classical sculpture and constant love for art history shaped him and his artworks in a Neo-Romantic artist that speaks about Love and Death.

Love and Death, Eros and Tanathos, the evergreen center of Galad's research; the balance and the fight between the two and the final fusion, where loving and losing means the same thing. This combination of forces keeps molding the artist's life unmercifully, making him develop a macabre and erotic visual style, filled with beautiful monsters and intense emotions.

Through his work, Galad wants to sensitize those people terrified by "bad" feelings, showing them that loss and grief are part of life as much as love and beauty. Galad showcases beauty of the human form and utilizes his heart to explore sexuality, challenging your identity and gender labels; his aim is to raise awareness surrounding nudity censorship and social taboos.

ANDREA GALAD: A MACABRE AND EROTIC VISUAL STYLE

The photographer was inspired by one of Eadweard Muybridge’s photo series and decided to shoot obese female bodies in a rather unusual setting: underwater. The results bring the audience into a brand new, mystique world of movement and the structure of the human body. The variety of art forms creates a diverse setting that enables the artist’s creativity to shine bright. Today, we sit down with Mariken to talk about her approach to art projects, ideas and the exhibition.

What do you do when you're not working on a visual art project?

I'm usually working on multiple projects at the same time. Because most of my projects are research-based and deal with matters of fact and fiction, I am always on the alert as to what happens around me. I scan the world around me, sometimes more consciously than others, to recognize and seize on the opportunities presenting themselves. If you want to know about my hobbies, I can tell you that I like to play tennis.

With the idea already formed in your head, how do you approach working on a new project? What kind of space makes you feel the most creative?

Every project starts with an idea indeed. Often, when I'm already working on a project, a new idea might pop up. This idea nestles in my head and urges me to collect content step by step, which I can later employ to materialize and sharpen the concept. In my studio, I collect materials on what I call ‘walls of inspiration’ that work as intuitive collections and mood boards.

In my most recent book, Miss Cox (2020), such mood boards can be seen in the studio views that the publisher and I decided to include. It is possible that one project gives birth to the next, sometimes from the need to deepen and expand on a certain topic in a different medium. As such Nude – Arising from the Ground sprang from Taking Off. Henry My Neighbor (Art Paper Editions, 2015).

Nude – Arising from the Ground was premiered in 2019 in Rotterdam, but it’s currently on view at Amsterdam’s The Ravestijn Gallery – now closed to the public due to COVID-19. Can we find new works there?

For sure! There are more photo works on display than in Rotterdam. Furthermore, I also show the installation Snapshots from the Unknown, which I built from light boxes, and there is a new film that I edited in a loop.

Previously, you mostly worked with film, text and photos. Why did you decide to include sculptures in this exhibition? Does sculpture allow you to present the idea of form and the human body better than other forms of artistic expressions?

For me, it is simple: sculpture is a three-dimensional medium, and I found it to be a nice addition and also a challenge to give shape to this topic in this medium. In ceramics, the body is more concrete and tangible compared to two-dimensional visual media.

All of the images were taken underwater, why did you choose to photograph the bodies/models in this environment?

I have chosen the underwater setting because I was curious as to how the body would behave under these conditions, contrary to above the ground, where we know much more about how gravity works. I was surprised by the results in which the obese bodies have turned into landscapes shaped by the water’s pressure.

The exhibition is inspired by a particular series from Eadweard Muybridge's photo series Human and Animal Locomotion. What about these images is so interesting to you?

One particular photogravure from the Human and Animal Locomotion series gave me food for thought. Not only was I fascinated by the rather heavy body of the young woman portrayed, but above all, by her struggle to even just raise to her feet from a lying position. This is a move that most people will just perform without ever thinking about it. I wanted to shape this struggle into a three-dimensional form, that’s why it ended up becoming sculpture.

Do you often seek inspiration in work created by other artists?

Although I find inspiration in the work of other artists, I rarely ever base my projects on other people's art.

Is there a new meaning you want to assign to Muybridge's title Arising from the Ground through your project?

Not really. This image showing a woman – presumably named Miss Cox – made me imagine how having such an obese body turns something as simple as standing up into quite a task. I could only make the movement and changes in her body palpable by translating this two-dimensional representation into a three-dimensional work. Only after that I began to consider using a living model for the underwater series.

How does the idea of movement find its place in your photography?

Movement was not the starting point, really. I was mostly looking for the often surprising effects on the heavy body floating freely underwater. This also called to mind the more animal-like qualities of the human body.

Obese female figures are not a conventional form of beauty. Do you think it's important for artists to discover and show that it is possible to find sensuality in different types of human bodies?

That isn’t really my line of approach. For me, it's mostly to do with the shapes the body assumes, which in a photograph could appear as a landscape. I've never been interested in the social position of obese people. What intrigues me is the way the body behaves underwater, how the heavy body appears to be exempt from the normal pull of gravity. I’ve also found beauty and elegance in the unexpected shapes the body is crinkled into by the water. Personality doesn't count in my project. That’s why you will barely see faces, or parts thereof, in this series.

What’s the reason you only focused on female bodies, and how do you work with models that need to pose in nude?

Because I was looking for unforeseen shapes, in which abstraction had a role to play. I sensed that the male genitals would be present so dominantly as to distract from the aesthetics. I was looking for a more anonymous type of body for the more bestial features of the human body. I invited several potential models to my studio to inform them about my project and my way of working, about what I expected from them and why. Thus, I was able to convince them about the importance of their contribution in a choreography that I directed.

You have created internationally acclaimed photography books. Why do you often choose this form to present your art?

I'm particularly interested in the photo book as a medium. I think that photographs placed in sequences work well when there's tension and suggestion built into the edit. Because photography is so intricately linked to the notion of time, to play with that relationship is what I’m attracted to. Because of its intimate character, I often choose the photo book as means and form. In a well-executed book, everything plays its part, from the size and weight to paper type and printing quality. And, contrary to film, the audience determines the order in which it wants to read the photo book.

Mariken Wessels’ latest exhibition, Nude - Arising from the Ground, at Amsterdam’s The Ravestijn Gallery and currently on standby due to COVID-19, presents an unusual approach to human motion and shape. This time, the Dutch artist surprises us through photography, sculpture and a new installation. 

Valentin Herfray is a photographer and filmmaker who likes to challenge a traditional medium of capturing imagery. Pushing the frontier of digital use and extending our visual experiences Valentin wants to explore the effect of mass media on our lives and push the limits of our modern and more traditional technologies.

Working between art, fashion, and technology, Valentin likes to play with our perception of reality, always looking for clever and innovative ways to photograph or record something from state-of-the-art technologies to low-res gadgets, turning the viewers' experience upside down, inside out, and round & round.

Thomas Ruff (born 10 February 1958) is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. He has been described as "a master of edited and reimagined images".

Ruff shares a studio on Düsseldorf's Hansaallee, with other German photographers Laurenz Berges, Andreas Gursky and Axel Hütte. The studio, a former municipal electricity station, includes a basement gallery.

Commenting on his influences, Ruff said, "My teacher Bernd Becher, showed us photographs by Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz and the new American colour photographers." He is often compared with other members of a prominent generation of European photographers that includes Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky and Rineke Dijkstra. From 2000 to 2005, Ruff taught Photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

In his studio between 1981 and 1985, Ruff photographed 60 half-length portraits in the same manner: Passport-like images, with the upper edge of the photographs situated just above the hair, even lighting, the subject between 25 and 35 years old, taken with a 9 × 12 cm negative and, because of the use of a flash, without any motion blur. The early portraits were black-and-white and small, but Ruff soon switched to color, using solid backgrounds in different colors; from a stack of colored card stock the sitter could choose one color, which then served as the background. The resulting Portraits depict the individual persons – often Ruff's fellow students – framed as in a passport photo, typically shown with emotionless expressions, sometimes face-on, sometimes in profile, and in front of a plain background. Ruff began to experiment with large-format printing in 1986, ultimately producing photographs up to seven by five feet in size (210 × 165 cm). By 1987 Ruff had distilled the project in several ways, settling on an almost exclusive use of the full frontal view and enlarging the finished work to monumental proportions. Art critic Charles Hagen, writing for The New York Times, commented: "Blown up to wall-size proportions, the photographs looked like gigantic banners of Eastern European dictators."

Because he found the effect of the colors too dominant in these, Ruff chose a light and neutral background for the portraits he made between 1986 and 1991. In a discussion with Philip Pocock, Ruff mentions a connection between his portraits and the police observation methods in Germany in the 1970s during the German Autumn. Indeed, while experimenting with composite faces in 1992, Ruff came across the Minolta Montage Unit, a picture generating machine, used by the German police in the 1970s to generate composite portraits. Through a combination of mirrors, four portraits, fed into the machine, produce one composite picture. Ruff started out reconstructing faces but soon found it more interesting to construct artificial faces, which often combine features of men and women, that do not, but could conceivably, exist in reality; this resulted in his Anderes Porträt series (1994-1995).

Ruff intended that large groups of the approximately eight-by-ten-inch color portraits would be hung together, so to add variety he photographed each person against a colored backdrop.

In 2003, Ruff published a photographic collection of "Nudes" with a text by the French author Michel Houellebecq. Ruff's images here are based on Internet pornography, which was digitally processed and obscured without any camera or traditional photographic device. In 2009, Aperture Foundation published JPEGs, a large-scale book dedicated exclusively to his monumental series of pixilated enlargements of internet-culled images in the compressed JPEG format.

His Substrat series (2002–2003), based on images from Japanese manga and anime cartoons, continued this exploration of digitally altered Web-based pictures. However, he alters and manipulates the source material such that the work becomes an abstraction of forms and colors with no visual memory of the original source material. On February 7, 2011, one of his Nudes pictures appeared on the cover of New York Magazine.

THOMAS RUFF: A MASTER OF EDITED AND REIMAGINED IMAGES

Japanese photographer Haruhiko Kawaguchi better known under his pseudonym Photographer Hal, literally wraps couples in love in 100x150x74 centimeter plastic bags. The latter huddle together, holding their breath as Kawaguchi wraps the film around them, vacuums the air out of the bag, and finally takes the photograph.

The photographer has just 10-20 seconds to take the image. Any procrastination in such an extravagant situation would entail a risk to the health of the models. The result of the above manipulations is a very strange, but somewhat endearing photo that evokes a rich spectrum of associations, from a sensual love scene to a frozen chicken wrapped in polythene.

The photographer says that the women he worked with tolerated the wrapping much better than men. The women tended to remain calm, whereas the males were prone to panic struggles for a breath of air and bouts of claustrophobia. One of the men even wet himself in the process. The ladies, on the other hand, were more concerned about how they would look in the picture.

Around eighty couples took part in the Flesh Love project. Kawaguchi met many of them in the nightclubs of his native Tokyo. When you hold someone you love in your arms, sometimes you want to literally dissolve inside - the photographer shared - To capture that feeling, I've shot couples in small or even cramped spaces such as motel rooms or bathrooms.

I tried it out on myself too - says Kawaguchi - and experienced the overwhelming fear. The pressure of the film gets stronger and stronger. The two lovers grow closer until finally they become one. For me, the vacuum pack is just a means. What really matters is the connection between the two people. Kawaguchi's aim is to convey the feeling of complete unity that comes from a couple in love.

“I want to capture love as it really is and the bathtub is an ideal vehicle to encapsulate the vivid reality in my images. A grand theme in mankind is Love and I, Photographer Hal, am challenging the majestic theme!”

Christophe Hohler is a visual artist and painter with dual nationality, French and Swiss. He was born in Switzerland in 1961. He currently lives and works in France. He is a graduate of the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg. "There is something fascinating about the characters that Christophe Hohler stages. The term fascinating does not, however, convey with sufficient precision what happens exactly at the moment our eyes are set on these characters. In fact, these frail silhouettes present themselves to us with such disconcerting evidence that we are overwhelmed by it. By contemplating these unarmed beings, seized at insignificant moments of their existence, we realize how conditioned and hindered our gaze is. For a long time now, common decency has advised us not to stare too insistently at our fellow human beings. Shouldn't we be careful not to stare too long? Does common decency forbid us today from seeing (understanding) others? Christophe Hohler lifts this taboo, as an artist, as a man, he refuses to conform to this kind of convention. So, when asked where all his figures come from, the artist answers in all simplicity "it is by painting that the subject reveals itself". For some time now, in fact, he no longer needs a model in front of him to give a body to his figures. This is because his mental vigilance mobilizes his visual memory and his empathy. This fusion guides his hands, and in a few dazzling traces emerge This one, Character 12-01, Individual 1, Refugee Group... For he paints fast, very fast. You have to have seen him even once: in a few colourful lines, he invents a body and makes it look the way you want it to. You can then understand that he has integrated a multitude of observations and that he has memorized the forms that certain psychic states can take. And he erects them into true symptomatic images. He models the figure with his yellow, with the blue, the red. The red especially, the red of life. He does not seek individuality, nor resemblance, but rather, with an infallible precision that is characteristic of humanity in human beings. It captures an intimate part of them, their fragility, their luminous dignity. That which we refuse to see and which fascinates us here." Claude ROSSIGNOL His works are regularly exhibited in France, Switzerland, Norway and Germany.

By contemplating these unarmed beings, seized at insignificant moments of their existence, we realize how conditioned and hindered our gaze is. For a long time now, common decency has advised us not to stare too insistently at our fellow human beings.

CHRISTOPHE HOHLER: SHOULDN'T WE BE CAREFUL NOT TO STARE TOO LONG

Under the peaceful foliage of the Chevreuse valley in Ile de France, Marie Taklanti creates a world out of time. An original work, which refers to movement, calligraphy and baroque.

Man is the essential figure of her artistic expression. In her work, "bodies make bodies". Caught between the attention of the group and the need to extract themselves from it, they are in search of themselves. Bodies come out of gravity, as free escapes, but in interdependence with other individuals and in connection with society. Individuals who cannot cope with the instability of the world. The representation of individuals fades away in favour of the expression of a movement that they do not master. The compositions are stripped of context and deliberately timeless, but the ambiguity of the titles brings a notion of geological or climatic phenomenon.

"My approach expresses man's quest for individualism and his incessant need to group together, always around myths, beliefs and territories, the hippie movement of the 70s, ecology or alternative today."

In the series of drawings, the quickest, most fluid gesture possible seeks to form a single whole. An uninterrupted line describes innumerable arabesques as a mysterious thread that connects beings by a secret attachment. The Japanese brush ink on Thai paper betrays a fascination for the calligraphy of the drawing, done freehand: "The medium is as important to me as the thing depicted. It is both what has been seen and the writing itself." The line of movement in the wash is only there to accentuate the rhythm. It contributes to the overall mood, to the baroque tone, more tormented than flamboyant, marked by both intensity and sobriety.

Marie Taklanti has exhibited in many salons and galleries in France.

MARIE TAKLANTI CREATES A WORLD OUT OF TIME

Walter Ciandrini is a painter and draftsman based in France whose works have been exhibited both nationally and in Switzerland. For him, creating is a vital need, through which he expresses what he feels and the moments of life. Ciandrini's art is an exploration of the human body in its "countless forms". His bold figurative compositions are created using acrylics, pastels, and Indian ink on linen canvas.

"I do not paint realistic portraits but the reality of my emotions."

CIANDRINI: AN EXPLORATION OF THE HUMAN BODY IN ITS COUNTLESS FORMS

Jean-François Laurent - JFL was born in Lille in 1975. He has been mainly been painting in his own with oil on canvas frames since 1997. His work is inspired by lights, colours and transparencies. It is influenced by the works of Lyonel Feininger, Robert Delaunay and Constantin Brancusi.

In his paintings, Jean-François Laurent seeks to transform perspectives and light to show the invisible, the interdependence of things, beings and objects. The lines intersect, cut, deform to give a very structured composition, yet perfectly free and detached from the rules. The subject, ranging from figurative to total abstraction, remains as perceptible to the observer who can project themselves into these familiar forms, while leaving the possibility to see what they wants to see, to feel what they like. Light and shadows are everywhere in the canvas. From every point of view, the interpretation of the work can be different.

His touch is precise, he works with little material and with a reduced range of colours. In this way, he seeks to make the canvas vibrate, to make it feel alive and sensitive to its environment. JFL seeks that each work is to be rediscovered at every moment, that the one who observes it is caught by the composition, by the colours, by the movement and that each time he lets himself be touched as if it were the first time.

Jean-François Laurent seeks to transform perspectives and light to show the invisible, the interdependence of things, beings and objects. The lines intersect, cut, deform to give a very structured composition, yet perfectly free and detached from the rules.

JEAN-FRANÇOIS LAURENT: LIGHTS, COLOURS AND TRANSPARENCIES

Born in 1983 in Paris, Cindy Nikolic lives and works in Savigny sur Orge in Essonne.

Cindy Nikolic's favourite subjects are facial expressions - which she has studied extensively - including the anatomy of muscles and the different movements they allow. An expression is only a moment, it is also a vector of emotions, and that is what has always fascinated the artist. Cindy Nikolic found in painting, a way not to freeze, but to amplify an emotion to communicate it.

Nikolic works in series of paintings or drawings. In general, everything starts from a meeting. She can also be very inspired by music and performing arts. When the artist explores a subject, she likes to look at it from a rational point of view and feel it to experience its pure emotion. Very often, she starts from dictionary definitions to refer to a reliable source, and she superimposes her feelings on it, this is what starts her reflection: the artist feeds herself on the discrepancies that can result from it. Nikolic takes drawn, written or photographic notes that she uses as material to move on to painting.

"When I explore a subject, I like to look at it from a rational point of view and feel it to experience its pure emotion. I very often start from dictionary definitions to refer to a reliable source, and I superimpose my feelings on it, this is what starts my reflection: I feed myself on the discrepancies that can result from it."

CINDY NIKOLIC: AN EXPRESSION IS A VECTOR OF EMOTIONS

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