Biostasie 13, 2006
Emmanuel Lesgourgues

Biography

Emmanuel Lesgourgues was born in 1974, he lives and works in Paris.

A graduate of the Ecole Camondo, he is a designer and interior architect by training.

After a career in interior architecture and teaching, he became exhibition curator and director of the Quasar endowment fund, a contemporary art collection which houses 1,600 works by 92 French artists since the 1980s. He is also vice-president of the art venue La Tannerie in Begard, Brittany.

His plastic work develops mainly around drawing, declining organic themes, fertile or modified cellular universes, through random, geometric patterns and a sensitive research on color. Dense, complex forms emerge from his creations, forming a sexual and vegetal universe in full metamorphosis.

He also produces series of photographs and videos playing on points of view. In public places, monuments, shopping centers or in transport: slowed down, views from the ground and a lens placed towards the sky or below, his images re-sensitize us to the way of soaking up a space or raising awareness instant.

Artistic approach

Since July 2018, he has been creating drawings exclusively on a digital tablet.

The approach is similar to that of traditional drawing: the stylus replaces the pencil, the screen the paper. On the other hand, the sensations of touch differ greatly in the relationship to the surface, as well as the relationship of the drawing to the space. The encounter with the format constituted by the screen initiates a new creative protocol. Indeed, on the tablet the drawing can never be visible in its entirety, that is to say as it will appear in its printed format. The visual artist therefore defines the format of the final drawing in advance and extrapolates, throughout the work, the result to the print scale. It does this by zooming back and forth across the tablet window. He thus navigates between different scales, within the limits of the screen format. In the continuous discrepancy between projection and reality, an apparent absence of direct link with its final representation and the feeling of a drawing out of context are felt.

The artist also experiences the feeling of getting lost in the space of the drawing within the drawing, of crossing the screen and of escaping the limits of the format.

The use of this medium, by establishing new relationships, opens up the pleasure of dynamic creation, the experience of an evolving design continuum.

“What matters to me is not so much asking where we are going as trying to live with the material. »

Emmanuel Lesgourgues' stylus could be guided by this assertion by Henri Matisse. Because it is the material, alive, which is at the heart of his creative process. The obsessive, spasmodic repetition of motifs wants to express the idea of an evolving matter, like the cells of living organisms.

“I apprehend drawing as a laboratory of discoveries and curiosities”. Its syntax calls for random writing, a non-voluntary construction, where the image is self-constructed, a veritable graphic mitosis. Cell fusion explores new worlds.

Artistic journey

Personal exhibition

2021 • “Transgenosis”, Elzévir Gallery, Paris, France

2021 • “Cell Chimeras”, Guéthary Museum, Ghéthary, France

2015 • “Winter 2015 Collection”, Lagardère Interactive, Paris, France

2007 • “Intermediate state”, Place of art “To be continued”, Bordeaux, France

2006 • “Vert Solitaire”, Showroom “Once upon a time”, Photographic Meetings of the 10th arrondissement, Paris, France

Collective exhibitions

2013 • “[∞] and other cycles”, Place of art La Tannerie, Begard, France

2013 • “Effervescence, the drawings of the creative genesis”, School of Architecture, Paris La Villette, France

2012 • “Guest room”, La Tannerie art venue, Bégard, France

2012 • “Drawing on paper”, Galerie Six Elvizir, Paris, France

2010 • “Urban Art Box”, Art Actuel Communication, SHISEIDO, Paris, France

2010 • “Urban Art Box”, Art Actuel Communication, SHISEIDO, Milan, Italy

2009 • “Animated drawings”, Gallery Stopping on the image, Bordeaux, France

2009 • “Inner view”, Collective You are here, Paris, France

2008 • “My detour in Berlin”, Detour Moleskine Competition, Berlin, Germany

2005 • “12 x 21 x 8”, Showroom “Once upon a time”, Paris, France

2003 • “Tamaris(k)”, Sainte-Eugénie Crypt, Biarritz, France

Price

2008 • Winner of the Detour Moleskine Competition

Exhibition curator

2021 • “Lionel Godart. Views in the studio”, The gallery – Peyrehorade, France

2021 • “Jean-Pierre Bourquin. Views in the studio”, The gallery – Peyrehorade, France

2020 • “Wine Color”, Château Haut Selve, Bordeaux, France

2020 • “Constellation”, The gallery, Peyrehorade, France

2019-20 • “Quasar – The collection”, Museum of Fine Arts, Pau, France

2018 • “Current against the Current” & “Current against the Current 2”, La galerie, Peyrehorade, France

2017 • “Inside-Inside”, La Tannerie art venue, Begard, France

2017 • “Stéphane Hazera. Crossed perspectives – The figure », The gallery, Peyrehorade, France

2017 • “Stéphane Hazera. Crossed perspectives – The landscape », Chemins de Bideak, Saint-Palais, France

2016 • “Jean-Claude Pinchon retrospective. Color Instinct”, Villa Beatrix Enea, Anglet, France