Born in 1980 in Belfast, Claire Morgan is a multifaceted artist. She is best known for the stuffed animals she uses in her compositions. She is herself a taxidermist, preparing the animals (often wild) she uses. Foxes, owls, ravens...these nocturnal animals form an integral part of the space composed of wires and insects, defined and designed by the artist. Caught in this constraining and exclusive environment, the animal is at the mercy of the aerial compositions. Death feeds on life and vice versa, the plant interpenetrating wildlife. An enclosed self-sufficient world into which human beings seemingly cannot penetrate. Yet each of us are this rat or squirrel struggling with a higher power.
Claire Morgan, Windfall, red squirel (taxidermy), fragments of polyethylene, nylon, glass (2015). © Claire Morgan
Pierre Soulages, 95, presents a series of works produced between 2013 and today. An elder of the French artists with works that once again continue his reflection on matter. Never completely black, never completely filled, the canvas is a pretext for an investigation on the light and reflection of the thick black paste. The viewer is therefore plunged into an intense, seemingly impenetrable world, which quest has engaged the artist for over thirty years. Pierre Encrevé, author of the artist’s catalogue raisonné, compares Soulages to Saint John of the Cross and the link could not have been more accurate. It is in the narrow darkness of his cell that the holy Carmelite mystic discovers the Light.
Pierre Soulages’ 19 new canvasses can be seen at Karsten Greve gallery in Paris until January 2.
Pierre Soulages, Peinture, 143 x 202 cm, 18 Février 2015 (2015)
© Pierre Soulages. Photo : Vincent Cunillère
