Galerie GP & N Vallois
Dogs Dream
Virginie Yassef , France
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Harlequinades
Julien Bismuth , France
Julien Bismuth, Pulcinella Study (The kingdom by beheading), technique mixte sur papier imprimé, 2020. Courtesy Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris
The monumental installation, the film and the photographs that Virginie Yassef presents in her exhibition Dogs Dream at 36 rue de Seine deceive perception and invite the eye to get lost in a labyrinth of sounds and signs. Here, the artist takes the path of dreaming, which is not unique to humans: dogs also dream, and probe, in their sleep and dreams, all the movements of the Earth, in its slightest tremors. Virginie Yassef, fascinated by Le Château de l'araignée, a 1950 film by Akira Kurosawa based on the story of Macbeth, recreates in a large installation in the heart of the gallery the atmosphere of a haunted forest. The visitor faces a waking dream, an enigma without solution, an in-between world, human and non-human.
Julien Bismuth presents Harlequinades in our gallery at 33 rue de Seine. He deploys the universe of the Commedia dell'arte in a series of drawings, sculptures and videos.
The gallery
One of the characteristics of the gallery, which opened in 1990 in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, is that it bridges the gap between contemporary art and Nouveau Réalisme,with the notion that an art dealer can work with a young artist and an established one in a similar fashion.
The gallery has been specialized in Nouveau Réalisme and French Avant-Gardes from the 60s since its inauguration: Jacques Villeglé, whose work has regularly been shown at the gallery over the past 20 years – with a first solo exhibition in 1999 –; the gallery also represents the estates of historic artists such as Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle. In 2017, Peter Stämpfli joined the gallery.
The 70s saw the birth of Hyper-Realism or Photo-Realism in the US, a new approach to fiction, simultaneously more realistic but also more contemplative than Nouveau Réalisme. Since 2018, the gallery represents two of its founding members: John DeAndrea and Robert Cottingham.
Since its inception, the gallery has successfully organized the first French solo shows of artists such as Alain Bublex (1992), Paul McCarthy (1994), Gilles Barbier (1995), Henrique Oliveira (2011), Pierre Seinturier (2014) and more recently of Iranian duo Peybak (2015), Cuban artist Lázaro Saavedra in 2016, John DeAndrea in 2018, Lucie Picandet and Zhenya Machneva in 2018, Tomi Ungerer in 2019, and Emanuel Proweller in 2021.
Gallery artists
Pilar Albarracín • Gilles Barbier • Julien Berthier • Julien Bismuth • Alain Bublex • Robert Cottingham • John DeAndrea • Massimo Furlan • Taro Izumi • Richard Jackson • Adam Janes • Jean-Yves Jouannais • Martin Kersels • Paul Kos • Zhenya Machneva • Paul McCarthy • Jeff Mills • Arnold Odermatt • Henrique Oliveira • Peybak • Lucie Picandet • Emanuel Proweller • Lázaro Saavedra • Niki de Saint Phalle • Pierre Seinturier • Peter Stämpfli • Jean Tinguely • Keith Tyson • Tomi Ungerer • Jacques Villeglé • William Wegman • Winshluss • Virginie Yassef
