WHERE I GAZE 

Whether it is the representation of everyday objects (a cup, eggs, a book page), familiar spaces (a studio or a well-known interior), or the portrait of relatives (Garance, Mélissa & Christian), Nino Kapanadze, Johan Larnouhet, Aubrey Levinthal, Tatiana Pozzo Di Borgo and Norma Trif work on their immediate environment and the sensitive elements that compose it. Gallery Mathilde Le Coz & Dans les yeux d'Elsa bring together for the first time the paintings of these four artists - two French, one Romanian, one Georgian and one American - who choose to paint this frequented, known and accessible world and who show their repertoire of images. 

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Where I Gaze is an exhibition where the psychological or physical proximity of an element determines its pictorial value. Whether it is the greenhouses of Norma Trif, the eggs of Tatiana Pozzo Di Borgo or the cups of Johan Larnouhet, the seriality and the repetition of the same motif allow free scope for a methodical formal exploration. The apparent banality of the subject, and its recidivism, exacerbates the attention paid to its execution. Declined in an infinity of variations like scales or stylistic exercises, the painting then becomes its own subject.

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But not only. This focus on the everyday object extends to the familiar and interior space and allows a psychological exploration of the motif. When Tatiana Pozzo Di Borgo paints what she finds in her studio (eggs, aprons, mirrors), Norma Trif depicts it emptied of all presence, stripped of anything that could distract from its evocative power as a place of creation. The face to face with the unique object or the place allows the artist to come face to face with herself - an introspection. Aubrey Levinthal even goes so far as to often paint herself in her interiors - blurred, concealed, her self-portraits are only a subtle evocation, the residue of a presence, but testify to the autobiographical quality of her paintings.

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This repertoire of personal images is thus a register of experiences whose objects, places and models carry the memory. When Johan Larnouhet or Norma Trif represent their friends, it is not only because they can easily invite them to their studio, but because they convey what binds them and what they have experienced together. And these experiences also make it possible to question painting in a more free way: the hooks depicted by Nino Kapanadze in Commonplace (2022), just like the title of the painting, are so many clues allowing us to situate the composition, which otherwise would be abstract. 

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For these artists, to look at these familiar spaces, these everyday objects, to paint their friends and relatives, is to use these motifs of proximity, directly accessible, almost voluntarily mundane as pretexts for pictorial, stylistic and formal research. But, beyond the exercise, it is to study one's repertoire of images, to unravel their mysteries and to show oneself.