DRAW Art Fair | Saatchi Gallery | Fromanger et Régent

BOOTH G4.4

Caroline Smulders presents drawings of two contemporary French artists: Gérard Fromanger (1939, Pontchartrain/France) and Emmanuel Régent (1973, Nice / France).

Since the 60s Gérard Fromanger, one of the key figures of Narrative Figuration, has contributed militantly to the seismic shift of the Parisian art world that happened after mai 68. The artist proceeds in series: In 1982 he began creating idiosyncratic portraits, using pastels of different colors. The figure of the model which evolves from the white background of the paper, without the addition of any decor, is born from the confluence, the intertwining, the game of multiple lines which originally seem to follow their own path without any representative ambition. Expanding his series of painters’ portraits, which are currently exhibited at the Parisian Musée Marmottan Monet in the midst of impressionist masterpieces, Gérard Fromanger conceived a unique series of drawings for the Draw Art Fair: A tribute to British painters – from Turner to Bacon.

In 2015 his works were shown at the Tate Modern, London in the exhibition The World Goes Pop. In 2016 the Centre Pompidou, Paris devoted a personal exhibition to Gérard Fromanger.

Emmanuel Régent’s drawing universe consists of little black strokes, small dots and obsessive marks which infiltrate reality and pare it back to the bone. His ruins hurt, his landscapes with shipwrecks and crashed plains give us shivers, his waiting lines make one think of somber moments in history. The endless sea makes us feel insignificant. These powerful scenes have an impact born of the deliberately slow work inspired by the daily comings and goings of the French coast which the artist inhabits. Mountains of exhausted felt-tip pens in the artist’s studio echo the Sisyphian dimension of countless strokes and contradict the rapidity of drawing. The empty spaces around these scenes permit the spectator to escape the weight of the subjects. In April 2019 Emmanuel Régent concluded an artist residency at the Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès where he explored the unique material of crystal, creating a large-scale sculpture in homage to a famous masterpiece by Caspar David Friedrich. The work will be exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2020.

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