Galerie LJ
Shona McAndrew , France
Sydney Vernon , Etats-Unis
Nadia Waheed , Arabie-Saoudite
"Inner Matter", sur une proposition d'Anne-Laure Lemaitre
Shona McAndrew: Hold You Tight, 2022, acrylique sur toile, 218,4 x 106,7cm
We are pleased to present “Inner Matter” from May 6 to June 17, 2023, curated by Anne-Laure Lemaitre, with American artists Shona McAndrew, Nadia Waheed and Sydney Vernon. This exhibition questions, through painting and drawing, the three artists’ relationship to the body, and how portrait can become a tool for self-acceptance, emancipation and introspection.
In the interstice that separates one body from another exists a universe, a space composed of perceptions and physical relations between beings and objects. We apprehend in part our environment through a rational prism erected by experience, logic and common understanding. But what exists beyond concrete markers, spatial and temporal connections? Beyond the tangible, the personal and the intimate weave a web, an inner weave; an immaterial alloy, an amalgam of memories and sensations through which we understand the world. This space, unique to each of us, inhabits us and differentiates us. The definition of self is built in concentric circles: the private self, the personal self, the public self. The private self, with impalpable contours invisible to all others, is the cradle of our multiple complexities. Transcribing this particular space into visual language, embodying the imperceptible – a material reality, but also hereditary, emotional and spiritual – is at the heart of the practice of the three artists presented in “Inner Matter”.
By anchoring themselves in a classic secular format, such as portraiture, to establish a practice that goes beyond the conventional norms of the genre, Shona McAndrew, Nadia Waheed and Sydney Vernon offer a “mise en abyme”, a less linear redefinition of the idea of portraiture as a representation of a subject, but also of an author. Evocative, eminently specific and unique, their practices are like incantations. They concretize in substantial palpable presence the deep foundations by which we connect individually to a common reality, which remains however protean and plural.
Exhibition from May 06 to June 17, 2023.
Rendez-Vous
Saturday 27 May 2023 at 7:00 pm
Night opening of the exhibition “Inner Matter”
75003 Paris, France 0172384447 www.galerielj.com
The gallery
Founded by Adeline Jeudy and Claude Lemarié in 2007, the programme of Galerie LJ focuses on emerging graphic artists and contemporary painters and sculptors, who examine contemporary society through the lens of figuration and narration.
Gallery artists
Etienne Pottier, Heidi Ukkonen, Julien Primard, Mu Pan, Murmure, Nastaran Shahbazi, Rithika Merchant, Quentin Garel, Caledonia "Swoon" Curry.
