Praz-Delavallade
Pauline Bazignan , Maroc
"Momentum"
Ultima 1, acrylique on canvas, 70 x 100 cm, 2024
“Cena, Anthropocene: Perspective”
The moment has come. What about ? What for ? Where to ? These are the questions raised by Pauline Bazignan’s new exhibition, Momentum, where the Italian Renaissance with the invention of perspective provides the keys to our Anthropocene period. This word, which refers to humans’ decisive action in the destruction of their own biotope, is partly homonymous with Cena (1495-1498) painted by Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. Yet the meaning of the two words is quite different. Cena is the end of a recent geological period, and Cena by Leonardo comes from “cenare,” to dine in Italian. But the large tapestry, the fourteen new paintings, and the six sculptures by Pauline Bazignan bring together these two meanings into a crucial thought of which she was not aware at the time of creating them. Her pictorial gesture is a vision: “I truly believe in the mediumistic role of the artist,” said Marcel Duchamp*…
With the means of painting, Pauline Bazignan reflects on the urgency for humans to leave the vantage point that commensuratio (perspective) has built. The Renaissance indeed established a measurable world in which humans are the masters. It began to measure the world in painting but also in reality. It maps it out, counts time with the invention of the mechanical clock. It measures the world to possess and exploit it. In Ultima 2 (2024) and Center (2024), Pauline Bazignan subverts this vantage point. By bringing the distant, the landscape, to the foreground of Christ. By giving the central role to the stream in her paintings Tempête 6, 10, 11 after Giorgione. By also taking up the panels of La Bataille de San Romano (1455-1460) by Paolo Uccello for versions where the candelabras take the place of the knights, where the organic seems to take precedence over history. The motif of candelabras, these circular fans, has been at the center of Pauline Bazignan’s pictorial quest for several years, with water being her preferred medium. “In my work, it’s the water that paints,” she says. Water is colorless and yet the painter designates it as the essential element of her palette, a substance without pigment but which carries all colors in its wake of forms, signs, and drips. A water that gives life to paintings as it gives life to the world. A water that Pauline Bazignan brings back to the forefront as the founding moment of a world to come. Where humans will take their place. Just their place.
-Text by Annabelle Gugnon
(*Marcel Duchamp, in 1957, before the American Federation of Arts, Houston, published under the title “The Creative Process,” l’Échoppe, 1987)
Solo exhibition show of Pauline Bazignan
From April 20th to June 8th, 2024
The gallery
Praz-Delavallade has maintained a long-standing relationship with American and European artists whose practices span various mediums. The gallery was founded in 1995 in Paris with an inaugural exhibition featuring works by Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Richard Petitbon, Jim Shaw, and Benjamin Weisman. By 1997, Praz-Delavallade was part of a thriving artistic scene in the 13th arrondissement in eastern Paris, alongside Air de Paris, Almine Rech, Art: Concept, Jennifer Flay, and Emmanuel Perrotin. Due to its close ties with Los Angeles artists, the gallery was known for bringing an international program to the burgeoning Parisian art scene, showcasing artists such as Sam Durant, Jim Isermann, John Miller, Analia Saban, Jim Shaw, and Marnie Weber, among others. In 2010, the Parisian gallery relocated to its current location at 5 rue des Haudriettes in the Marais and continued to support Los Angeles artists by exhibiting a new generation including Matthew Brandt, Heather Cook, Chris Hood, Nathan Mabry, Joe Reihsen, Ry Rocklen, and Amanda Ross-Ho alongside European artists such as Soufiane Ababri, Pierre Ardouvin, Thomas Fougeirol, Maude Maris, and Golnaz Payani. In the fall of 2016, Praz-Delavallade opened a new branch at 6150 Wilshire Boulevard, on the famous Miracle Mile artery, just across from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, aiming to bridge the gap between the two cities it considers home.
Gallery artists
Soufiane Ababri, Pierre Ardouvin, Carlotta Bailly-Borg, Pauline Bazignan, Matthew Brandt, Phil Chang, Heather Cook, Sepand Danesh, Sam Durant, Thomas Fougeirol, Genevieve Gaignard, Chris Hood, Jim Isermann, Joel Kyack, Dan Levenson, Nathan Mabry, Maude Maris, John Miller, Amy O'neill, Adi Nes, Golnaz Payani, Joe Reihsen, Dario Robleto, Ry Rocklen, Amanda Ross-Ho, Analia Saban, Jim Shaw, Cole Sternberg, Marnie Weber, Johannes Wohnseifer
