On the occasion of the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, gallery T&L and  gallery Mathilde M. Le Coz join forces again to present the new generation of figurative painting in France. Eight artists, all based in Paris, four women and four men, all born after 1989, who illustrate the revival of figuration in France over the past ten years. Nearly thirty works exploring the central theme of the dream - declined from nightmare to dream - brought together in an exhibition called Madame Rêve, the title of a famous song by French singer Alain Bashung.

 

The exhibition

 

Echoing the theme of the Biennale - The milk of dreams -, the exhibition explores the way in which the dreamlike universe has become an omnipresent underlying ingredient in the work of the young figurative scene: without necessarily being the main subject of the paintings, the interpenetration of spaces, the levitation of bodies, the confusion of realities - all components that we find in dreams, which re-elaborate reality - are a recurring characteristic of the works of figurative artists of the current movement.  

 

These Parisian artists like to paint or draw scenes that could be called "atmospheric": they depict disturbing atmospheres that echo the nightmare and the unsaid - in Malingrëy for example - or relating to ecstatic dreaminess

(the acid colors and virtual spaces of a Garance Matton), passing through the metaphysical meditations of the black and white drawings of Katarzyna Wiesiolek or even the scenes suspended in cloudy limbo by Nicolas Gaume. So many artistic identities, so many visions of reverie and what it says about our unconscious, which testify to the vitality of a scene of rare dynamism.

 

In the setting of the 17th century Scuola di San Giovanni in Bragora, a stone's throw from the Arsenal, the exhibition will develop on three levels, on the mode of an ascent beginning with the nightmare to end in the dream - as Dante starts from Hell to ascend to the Empyrean.  

 

This exhibition marks the opening of the Parisian galleries T&L and Mathilde Le Coz in Venice, where they plan to organize several exhibitions a year in addition to their activity in Paris.  

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