Duo show with Sandra Lecoq

An exhibition marked by trust and complicity between Sandra Lecoq and Tatiana Wolska. A duo, or rather a wordless conversation between the two artists… words become superfluous in the face of such complicity. For this is not a meeting, but one of their reunions in situ. What unites them, beyond the place, is their artistic and personal history… a bond as invisible as it is indivisible. Their paths have crossed and recrossed since their school days at the Villa Arson in Nice… to the inner workings of the GAC Annonay. Just as Montaigne referred to La Boétie with a sober “because it was him, because it was me,” it would almost suffice to say: “because it was them”!

What they exhibit together is a two-voiced manifesto… eloquent in both gesture and color… vibrant and luminous! Each respects the other and addresses the other to highlight them without detracting from them… like a melody played by four hands. It is in this atmosphere of understanding and kindness that the works reveal their full power in the space, like a perfume with notes as sweet as they are bitter. For the works, like the artists, join forces to transform this space into a sounding board for a commitment that is as poetic as it is political… a loud message of audacity and sincerity! There is even a sense of urgency to hear what their works have to say to us… right here, right now… like a sudden realization. The exhibition space thus becomes the peaceful theater of a unique and ephemeral experience… a configuration of the present moment in which we participate as much as we observe. We are convinced!

Tatiana Wolska’s work contains an organic memory… traces of movement and the body. Her drawings oscillate between premonition and premeditation… nestled in the preparatory stages of a happy event to come. Bringing out what is hidden inside, like giving birth to an idea. The space, the place, provokes a change of scale… a blossoming of the drawing beyond its A4 sheet… a break in the everyday. For the occasion, Tatiana has chosen a “return to the wall” as a support for painting and the Genius loci. It is a frontal relationship with a “blank page” that allows for all possible writings and responds to a need for spontaneity and unity. Responding to silence… manifesting… improvising. Inhabiting space… letting forms crawl and climb freely… materializing a presence like the outgrowths of a thought in motion… galloping. The contortion of the lines takes on an enveloping dimension that gently embraces us… alive. In her relationship with the space, the artist demonstrates a great capacity for adaptation and projection in the face of the imperatives of the surface and the imminence of the exhibition. Outside the studio, she immerses herself in the place and in Sandra’s work to set the context for a shared narrative that makes sense. She creates a backdrop that exists independently but becomes the ideal and essential environment for the characters to come to life. We then naturally shift towards narrative coexistence… a moment of sharing… an open and collaborative work.

Echoing Tatiana, Sandra Lecoq chooses her compositions to turn art into (self-)mockery… not to take herself too seriously and to put things back in their place. Her figures enter the stage… or rather the track. With placards in hand and mouths wide open, they climb the wall like tragicomic acrobats. Taken from the series entitled “La Harde,” initiated by the artist two years ago, these collages offer her unprecedented ease and allow for installations of varying sizes and extravagance… living narratives designed to reinvent themselves. A touch of agitation and madness animates them and propels this poetic-political manifestation to another level… that of freedom. This is where everything converges and the synthesis of past forms is realized… a concentration of satisfaction and generosity on the part of the artist. His hybrid and removable characters populate the exhibition like realistic and fantastical troublemakers… touching and sometimes disturbing… with a strange familiarity. They draw us into a fable of which we are inevitably a part… a herd as wild as it is civilized. The artist tells us the story of our humanimalities… in all their nuances. Ambiguity plays out in the clash of opposites and paradoxes that characterize life… right down to the color, which can be as seductive as it is kitsch… as sweet as it is repulsive… as luminous as it is garish. It is not there to feminize but to unify these subjects-objects. In a monochrome of pink, fabrics with varied patterns outline the bodies like articulated patchwork puppets. The artist manipulates them as she pleases, sending them on incredible adventures tinged with humor and irony… continually surprising the viewer. Because each exhibition… like each day… is a unique representation of this small, modular, and random society… a strange clash of the world.

– Anna Rémuzon

Opening Sunday 26.09, 6.30pm
Open Wednesdays to Saundays, 3pm > 6pm

Location
GAC
9 Rue Boissy d’Anglas
07100 Annonay (FR)

More info about Tatiana Wolska