Galerie Paris-Beijing is pleased to announce that it now represents the artist Marion Charlet. Her first solo exhibition will be presented in November 2020: “… Et l’été reviendra.”
Marion Charlet invites us in a colorful and heavenly world, with an atmosphere that reminds us of holidays, in which we gladly step into. Using similar motifs and patterns, and a color palette that can be found in all her paintings and drawings, she creates a universe of her own.
Wandering through her paintings, we walk into Eden-like places where big interior spaces are intwined with abundant vegetation. Without any human presence, except for some lost artifacts, the viewer immerges easily in her works, paintings and watercolors alike, which range from big to small sizes.
In her window-like paintings, sometimes literally, with her Cruising (2020) series, we are welcomed to unknown lands full of opposing forces. An organized and architectural world, with straight lines and big constructions where every little detail is meticulously done, goes against an abundant vegetation, filled with chaos, which fights for its space to the point where the calm atmosphere shifts to a sense of insecurity. The painted spaces “I will rest there (2017), Like a bird (2017), … ” suddenly look like quickly abandoned places just before a sudden catastrophe hits.
Marion Charlet doesn’t paint real places: her landscapes are more like a summer dream she welcomes us into. She works using memories of beloved places, distorting photographs she took and uses as endless sources for references and patterns: she changes the dimensions, lines and perspectives of the places, before painting them with a perfect at application, using just light and almost neon colors and rendering very little shadows. Those acidulous colors give shapes to her compositions and its psychedelic atmosphere, with a sense of kitsch accentuating the shift from the appearance of a resting place to a false sense of calmness. All of that tend to create atmospheres with a sense of unreality.
We have the impression of a contained world, apart for everything else, where viewers are free to project themselves – Marion Charlet wants to build “timeless spaces where everyonecan see themself, can be attracted to.”
Contrary to the vast majority of her paintings, her new series Ciao (2020) introduces the human gure in large formats where the artist stages real colorful choreographies. The compositions, focusing on the dancers’ bodies, allow us to identify with those anonymous gures. There are no landscapes, but a similar color palette, which truly embodies the joyful dances where the characteristic blue dominates.
Influenced by English painters, especially David Hockney, Marion Charlet takes us with her in a universe that breaks away from the classical perspective, where each painting feels like an invitation to travel.
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