URBIS

URBIS

For most of us, from city to city, the urban atmosphere is somewhat the same, symbolized by the gigantism of the buildings, the architectural perspectives devoid of humanity, the forced anonymity.

The time factor and economic pressure have replaced the happiness of living and understanding everyday life with serenity.
We see the city as majestic, cold, uncompromising, relentless.

Under the lens of photographer Jean-Christophe Ballot, the city takes on another dimension, it becomes welcoming, luminous, radiant, universal.
The one we could consider as our enemy is alive, imaginative, innovative, visionary.

The city is part of us as we are part of itself.
Whether we spend our lives there or for a brief moment, we leave an indelible mark on each other, testimony to the meeting of two worlds: man and his creation.

Tribute to Jacques Villeglé

Jacques, Marie, Bertrand, Mahé de La Villeglé, known as “Jacques Villeglé”, born March 27, 1926 in Quimper, is a French visual artist.
He died on June 6, 2022 at the age of 96.

From February 1949 with Hains, Jacques Villeglé began to collect lacerated posters.

In October 1960, he joined the New Realists movement.

He creates works from posters torn by anonymous passers-by or damaged by climatic conditions by taking them off their support in the street. After having made a choice in the posters collected, he operates in the poster, like a photographer, a framing, sometimes, but rarely, he recomposes a poster from different pieces of poster, then maroufles them on canvas and signs them when he gives them up. The challenge is to make a popular work with these street posters “reflections of the dominant culture”. This superposition, through the different posters, reveals an infinity of associations and new meanings.

In 1961, he created Carrefour Sèvres / Montparnasse, a torn poster with dazzling colors spotted by the Americans and which allowed the artist to obtain the label of precursor of pop art. He differs from Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein by the importance given to the formal dimension, to the plastic qualities of the poster and not to slogans and brands.

Jacques Villeglé becomes a street archaeologist by restoring a part of the collective memory devoted to oblivion or destruction. His sources of inspiration multiplied with the emergence and development of the consumer society with the progressive domination of advertising. The official or wild posters are of great formal diversity with a wide palette of colors. By using these posters, it was necessary that the slogan be illegible by removing a word, a letter so that it is no longer recognizable. It’s not about making propaganda but about telling stories. The image must become a work with commercial or political allusions.

If Jacques Villeglé is fond of the world of images, he also shows a great interest in typography, graphic research and poetry.

The creation of his socio-political Alphabet began with the identification in 1969 of a particular graffiti on a subway wall.

He introduces more and more figures in his alphabet and since 2010 has been interested in cryptography.

Our summer exhibitions :

After the success of the “Veni, Vidi, Amavi” exhibition cycle during the 2021 season, we will offer you a new exhibition cycle in 2022:
“Urbis, Somnium, Mare”. (The city, the dream, the sea)

The first exhibition will deal with “Urbis”, with the photos of cities that urban photographer Jean-Christophe Ballot has captured over the past thirty years.

Exhibition from June 22 to July 10, 2022.

The second exhibition will feature “Somnium”, a new production of paintings on aluminum by visual artist Olivier Vincent.

Exhibition from July 13 to August 7, 2022.

The third exhibition “Mare” will show the protean works of the artist Patrick CHAPPERT-GAUJAL. We have selected from his very rich creation, nautical charts that have become abstract works, paintings, drawings, metal sculptures and ceramics, unique pieces created in China.

Exhibition from August 10 to September 4, 2022.

The artists and their works:

Jean-Christophe Ballot is a contemporary photographer, born in 1960. For thirty years he has pursued a unique path in the artistic world, claiming and practicing contemplative photography.
All of his work is space-oriented: that of cities, with the urban landscape and architecture.

Olivier Vincent was born in 1970 in Korea, he arrived in France very young and is sometimes nostalgic for his unfinished childhood, he often seeks the flavors of childhood. He expresses it in painting. Depending on his mood of the moment, his paintings explode with bright colors or become a monochrome of soft colors.
The abstract shapes offer an imaginary journey to the viewer.

Patrick Chappert-Gaujal is a French artist born in 1959. At 15, he joined the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Perpignan. In 1985, he resided in Sweden for five years. He travels to South Africa, Asia, the United States, Europe, and recently to China where he learned the creation of porcelain objects… He now lives and works in Occitania