Berthet-Aittouarès

Clotilde Scordia, exhibition curator.

Clotilde Scordia is an art historian, art critic and independent curator. She devotes her research to modern and contemporary Turkish art and regularly publishes on the subject (Sculptures, Études sur la sculpture XIXè -XXè siècle, Art Unlimited, Istanbul Art News).

Author of Istanbul-Montparnasse. Les Peintres Turcs de l’École de Paris (2021, ed. Déclinaison), Néjad Devrim. La Dernière bohème (2023, ed. El Viso), Jacques Germain (2023, ed. mare & martin) and Larock-Granoff. Histoire d’une galerie (2024, ed. mare & martin), she also writes about foreign art scenes (Lebanon, Turkey) and interviews artists for the Happening website (Nil Yalter, galerie Berthet-Aittouarès ; Ali Kazma…).

In the age of the Anthropocene, how can we bear witness to nature and our environment? The three artists in the exhibition, Anne Manoli, Yann Bagot and Paul Iratzoquy, each at a different stage in their careers, claim to be reclaiming nature to reveal its power and beauty.

Like adventurers, they draw on the spot (Yann Bagot), live the empirical experience of the mountains and hiking (Paul Iratzoquy) or become silent observers (Anne Manoli) to bear witness to it as faithfully as possible. Their paintings and drawings immerse the viewer in a creative, telluric world, a communion with the mineral and plant world. The senses are awakened, the work emancipates itself from its support, and the viewer is drawn into these parturient worlds.

Faced with the immensity of these monumental rocky beaches, Yann Bagot transcribes their raw beauty. Faced with mountains, man feels his smallness,
Paul Iratzoquy sets out to map it and better understand it. As for Anne Manoli, the world of water, ponds and their inhabitants like frogs, is a mirror of the soul and emotions.

– Clotilde Scordia
exhibition curator, March 2025