To mark its 35ᵉ anniversary, Galerie de Buci is delighted to present Personal Story, an exhibition by Maxime Vardanian, the Uzbek artist who inaugurated the gallery's walls in 1989.
With Personal Story, the paintings of Maxime Vardanian return to the Galerie de Buci for a deeply intimate exhibition. Through works that blend personal memories and universal narratives, the artist offers a reflection on the passage of time, memory and identity.
In his book Vardanian: Peintre (Artémoin, 2001), Rafael Pic emphasized: ‘Vardanian's works don't just tell a story: they build bridges between the intimate and the universal, the individual and the collective.’
The artist invites us into a world where intimate surrealism blends with visual poetry, blending the dreamlike magic of Chagall with the expressive dislocation of Soutine. Vardanian’s work is a chromatic symphony, with a warm, sensual palette evocative of oriental spices, reviving harmonies thought to be lost. Each color vibrates like a note in a secret melody, revealing unexpected connections.
This vibrant palette gives rise to dynamic forms, tormented lines, and bold distortions that push the subject to the edge of abstraction. Far from disrupting harmony, these elements create dramatic tension, akin to a theatrical performance where raw emotion takes center stage.
Vardanian transports us to a veiled, blurred world, where everything seems filtered through a lens of melancholy or dizzying intoxication. Paradoxically, this hazy quality enhances the colors, making them deeper and more vibrant — amplified by nostalgia and memory.
His paintings feature objects that haunt his imagination: lush fruits resembling still-life jewels, bottles shimmering like hidden secrets, and cups floating on tables like water lilies from Monet's garden. Everyday fragments, transformed by the artist's gaze, become relics of an enchanted world. These details—both ordinary and extraordinary—unveil a quiet magic, a captivating poetry that celebrates the fleeting beauty of the moment.
As the first artist exhibited at Galerie de Buci in 1989 and 1990, Maxime Vardanian has since become a leading figure in contemporary art. Blending abstraction and symbolism, his work delves into the human soul with rare sensitivity. In his own words: ‘Each canvas is a conversation with the past, an attempt to reinvent it to better understand the present.’
Galerie de Buci invites you to discover or rediscover the works of Maxime Vardanian at 73 rue de Seine in Paris from 24 January to 1 March 2025.
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