TOUT PRES DE MOI (So close to me)
Maxime Biou, Marguerite Piard, Norma Trif

After an inaugural curatorial collaboration, gallery Mathilde Le Coz gallery and Dans les yeux d'Elsa are joining forces for the first time to present the work of three painters from the Beaux-Arts de Paris: Maxime Biou (graduated in 2019), Marguerite Piard (graduated in 2020), and Norma Trif (currently in 4th year). These painters seize subjects, which by their universality, resonate with each of us: the intimacy between two people, friendship, tenderness, sisterhood, care... the exhibition "So close to me" puts in dialogue the approach of these three artists who share a deeply intimate painting. By their stripped compositions and the central place of the figures, they highlight their attachment to these beings, to these very special moments, leaving no superfluous details to disturb their apprehension.

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These three artists are interested in the bedroom and what is played out there. Alternately a place of solitude, contemplation, rest and love, the bedroom is a small intimate theater enclosed by four walls within which introspection and emotional ties are expressed in the greatest secrecy. For Maxime Biou, the bedroom is a neutral, sober, undefined space. The sheets, when they don't discover his characters, are still warm. Their folds say more than that woman or cat looking away. We, spectators, voyeurs with muffled steps, hold our breath so as not to interrupt the density of the silence, observe as though through the hole of a skylight the elusive imprint left by intimacy.

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With Norma Trif this intimacy is shared. The painter gives us access to her characters in which we recognize ourselves. A teddy bear, cellphones abandoned on a bed, sunglasses on a bedside table...the objects individualize those who populate these rooms - Norma Trif paints attachment, love, friendship and the loneliness of those around. The tenderness she has for her subjects overflows from her paintings, the soft colors she uses to depict them coat her figures whose mutual affection is contagious.

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With her tight framing on a part of the body, an attitude, Marguerite Piard, for her part, reveals the vectors of inexpressible emotions that are the skin and the gesture. By this bias, the painter no longer makes it possible to identify a particular person, or their gender, it is no longer a question of designating someone but of translating and expressing the contact which binds two beings, materializing the sensations of the body. A body, mainly her own, which invites us to take a new look at the female nude.

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There are moments that we would like to register permanently that words would not be enough to express. Stop time. What remains of those moments? These are often unspeakable sensations but fully anchored in our memory. For Maxime Biou, Norma Trif and Marguerite Piard, painting is a way to fix them permanently and give substance to these inner feelings.

Mathilde Le Coz and Elsa Meunier