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Galerie Iragui is glad to present the first personal show of the French artist
FLORENCE REYMOND || BACKYARD FUNERALS
8.07.09 – 8.08.09
VERNISSAGE 8 JULY at 19.00
There exists a certain friction between the epochs in the last series of works by Florence Reymond. The tomb effigies’ theme allows her to reactivate the medieval aesthetics which has become no more than a shadow of itself. The absence of physical contact with the mortal remains maintains nowadays a form of virtualization of death manifesting itself in a number of signs among which is the proliferation of a skull. Two young girls climb the effigies’ figures in a completely casual manner (No Title, 2008). The picture of the effigies reduced to a plain pattern condenses the Life and Death of the Image brought up by Regis Debray.
The paintings by Florence Reymond stage a false naivety which still cannot conceal the shadow aspect which it is in charge of. The use of acid colors, wax crayons and cut-outs develops the notion of the childhood of art though the dripping, rubbed out faces or those simply evaporated in the limbo of the memories which appeal to the unconscious mind. The surface of the canvas seems to pick up the memory surges, the images appearing as a retinal convulsion in the impalpable reality. This traces the roots of the works to the artistic tradition of Surrealism. Their vision mixing the different realities produces the most exciting supreme vision. Hasn’t André Breton said to ‘reunite conscious and unconscious minds to build a surreality?’
Florence Reymond proceeds with the dramatic tension of her paintings in an installation created for the exhibition at the galerie Iragui. The installation presents a series of family photographs which has been damaged and crossed out. The installation presents the hidden part of the autobiographical story which haunts the artist’s paintings starting from her early works. Her figures’ bodies and faces are washed out from the memories.
Alexandra Fau
Florence Reymond was born in 1971 in Lyon, France. She lives and works in Paris. In 1994 she obtains her DNSEP at l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Saint-Etienne. In 2005 her works are bought by the Mission des Arts Plastiques of the Direction des Affaires Culturelles of Pontault-Combault and Montreuil. In 2006 she enters the collection of the Direction des Affaires Culturelles of Grand-Quevilly. In 2007 her works are by the Musée Paul Dini in Villefranche-sur-Saône, France and enter the collections of David Brolliet, Geneve, Switzerland and Jean-Marc et Claudine Salomon, France.
She receives sponsorship from the DRAC of Ile de France in 2005 and from the Ville de Paris in 2007