Galerie Trois Points is delighted to present Entrelacs, a group exhibition featuring six European and Canadian artists from July 5^th to August 23^rd. Elmyna Bouchard and Natalie Reis, both represented by the gallery and guest artists Marie-Claude Bouthillier, Julie Ouellet (Canada), Martinet & Texereau (France) and Nikola Röthemeyer (Allemagne) show paper works where simplicity and complexity are bound together.

The poetic pieces exhibited in Entrelacs convey the artists’ desire to use and think the line as the basic act of drawing. Betraying the action, the sinuous paths taken by the line are developing through a considerable economy of means, common to all the artists. Compositions are modeled by different patterns through repetition, superposition and deviation. Both graphic and conceptual at once, the works surprise by their subtlety and their slight imperfections.

Elmyna Bouchard is interested in constraint as a dynamic element of the medium of drawing. Her approach favours diversion and is characterized by the use of the stamping technique. The monochromatic figures and surfaces from the series Exercice de délicatesse are formed by an apparatus of small drawings fixed together, evoking textile and basketwork. Through this process, the impulsive and animated act is left aside and the artist is faking a certain quietness which is often associated with slow and repetitive mechanisms.

Julie Ouellet draws free and unpredictable lines that cross each other to build muddled shapes that evoke wandering and strolling. One can sense doubt and tension in these amalgams possibly because of the infinite aspect of the pattern that prevents the discovery of a potential outcome. Julie Ouellet and Elmyna Bouchard both work in the field of abstraction, constantly blurring the references and codes of the form.

At first glance, Marie-Claude Bouthillier’s work could also be perceived as abstract, but then tends towards figuration once the viewer becomes aware of the process. The artist presents a series of drawing exploring notions of identity and aura. Her self-portraits, shaped by an accumulation of signatures, try to go back to the genesis of writing while the artist is studying her own body and the energy spent on a linear path from the mind to the gesture.

Martinet & Texereau propose figurative works. The Parisian collective is interested in notions of exoticism, everyday life and banality. They are expressing it through drawings where subjects merge into their environment. The duo often starts with a detail or anecdotal element, which they try to replace in its original context and understand its meaning in relation to others. This detail thus becomes the starting point of a formal and functional research, a pretext to the subject’s expansion. Each drawing allows a different look at the chosen elements as it valorizes and induces them a unique aura.

Natalie Reis also works in figuration, while she revisits the sill life genre. She makes use of the floral pattern, a symbol both figurative and metaphoric questionning the contribution of women artists in pictorial practice. Her drawings contextually appropriates the long venerated history of floral painting, while referencing the tradition of Vanitas and vignette painting styles. Images of venomous bouquets reference the history of women and their relationship to still life painting, herbalism and the taboos of maternity and how these metanarratives are cultivated in our subconscious, resulting in a current polarized sense of identity. The intimate work of Reis is a social and political provocation.

Nikola Röthemeyer’s precise and serial interventions refer to the everyday nature in an intentionally contemplative perspective where time seems to be suspended. Figuration, here underlined by a narrative frame, emerges from this latent period. Röthemeyer is the only artist of the six who exploit this aspect in her practice. Her relatively abstract « drawn stories » suggest a second reading and a new accessibility for the work.

Galerie Trois Points is very grateful to Galerie Bertrand Baraudou (Paris), Galerie Kuckei + Kuckei (Berlin), and Galerie Simon Blais (Montreal), who made this exhibition possible.

Press release

Exhibition Press