Olivier Kaeppelin – H Gallery

The exhibition’s title draws its poetic inspiration from the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. It brings together four female artists whose paintings resonate with the words of James Joyce: “He was abandoned, happy, close to the wild heart of life.” These four painters, belonging to the same generation, have in recent years demonstrated a renewed interest in the use of the figure: characters, faces, landscapes, objects, animals… Karine Hoffman constructs her forms from the presence of historical or symbolic memory; Oda Jaune from the essential manifestation of the body and the dream; Sarah Jérôme from the flows of nature and the love between beings; Louise Tilleke from human or animal expression in relation to the demands of freedom.

Their works offer us a sense of profound existential and pictorial intensity. A singular harmony reigns between gentleness and violence, inviting us to “enter” their space, where we encounter a profound experience of creation—the very essence of the enigma, of art and painting’s challenge against the reductive rhetoric of dominant discourses.

OLIVIER KAEPPELIN is a writer, art critic, and curator. His numerous projects include exhibitions at the Villa Medici, the Frac Pays de-la-Loire, the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art in Villeneuve d’Ascq, the H and E. Leclerc Foundation in Douarnenez, Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, Bozar, the National Art Center in Tokyo, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (Japan), the Kunstmuseum Picasso in Münster, and the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. He has directed international biennials such as those in Busan (South Korea), Frankfurt, and Bad Homburg (Germany). He founded Monumenta in Paris and served as director of the Maeght Foundation. He held various positions within the Ministry of Culture and headed the Delegation for the Visual Arts. He produced numerous programs for France Culture, served as deputy director of France Culture, and later as advisor to the President of Radio France.

Sarah Je ro me, “Daydreamer” (Ecstasy), 2025, huile sur papier calque monté sur Dibond,150 x 137 cm, Courtesy H Gallery, Paris HD