SILLAGES

“Speaking without sound is stronger than speaking with words, because words can tell lies. When you express yourself in movement, you are simply translating an instant, captured in your body”. These words from choreographer Carolyn Carlson resonate vibrantly here in this exhibition, where they speak to the creative process engaged by the contributing artists: primacy of gestural language over spoken language, distrust of words, intensity of the instant...
Through this selection of forty-odd works staging young creators alongside seasoned artists, Sillages is an exhibition that sets out to explore and unravel creative process in action. The exhibition stages the artworks to examine how they embody creative practice, consciously steering clear of any interpretation that would foreground what is said more than what is shown. The surface of each piece has meaning purely in the movement it embodies, leaving all other discourse behind. Gazing across the surfaces, we witness trace of the artist’s hand that translates their creative process, much like the wake on a water surface translates the passing of a boat, offering a glimpse into turbulences negotiated, hesitancies around directions taken, changes in course—conscious or unconscious—and the points of no return left behind when movements overstretch or overreach.
If the exhibition focuses on what, for convenience sake, we call ‘abstract works’, it is simply to better reveal the presence of this movement, raw and unfettered by the trappings of figurative forms. The artist’s stroke, stripped bare, is shown sweeping (Gérard Traquandi), surging in a blaze (Alain Sicard), dripping with colour (Hélène Valentin) or playing into signs, semantics, story and writing (Anne-Marie Schneider)… Shades of depth, intensity, and handwork that enable each artist to patiently develop their own language as a way to engage, shape and mould their material. Their practice, then, becomes a quest, an odyssey in the confines of their studio, an adventure guided by the sheer pleasure of movement.

• Samira Ahmadi Ghotbi Gabriele Chiari Ilse D’Hollander Jean-Christophe De Clercq Jean Degottex Marc Devade A K Dolven Roland Flexner Shirley Goldfarb Simon Hantaï Rémy Hysbergue Denis Laget Anthony Plasse Charles Pollock Judit Reigl Marina Rheingantz Armelle de Sainte-Marie Milène Sanchez Anne-Marie Schneider Alain Sicard Gérard Traquandi Hélène Valentin Marie Zawieja