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To close the season celebrating its 30th anniversary, Maison des Arts has chosen to present the airy, delicate works of four contemporary artists from very different universes, demonstrating the richness and diversity of the shapes and forms of an ancestral material: paper.
Omnipresent in our daily lives, despite the announcement of its disappearance in the digital age, paper is an age-old material invented in China during the Hans dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD). It's a material made from plant fibers (rag, then wood from the 19th century onwards) suspended in water, drained on a flat surface and dried. A humble material, it is generally inexpensive and readily available, durable and reusable. Light and malleable, it can be used both flat and in volume. Sensitive to light, it can be used to play with transparency and opacity.
These characteristics explain the longevity and versatility of this universal medium. Paper can be metamorphosed in a multitude of ways, serving as much as a support as a raw material. The four artists in the exhibition are heirs to this long technical and artistic history of paper, using a variety of methods that require few tools but a great deal of meticulousness and patience. Each invites us into her own world, giving us a new perspective on this most common of everyday materials.
Nathalie Boutté, Ferri Garcès, Mathilde Nivet and Anne-Charlotte Saliba describe themselves more as artisans than artists, sharing a taste for texture and touch. Playing with light and shadow, each in her own way ennobles a seemingly banal material with a genuine concern for ethics. Like modern-day memento mori, their works transport us into dreamlike worlds in which the evanescence of paper echoes the transience of life, subtly reminding us to enjoy the present moment.
