"There is something dark in us that makes life brighter" says the poet and film-maker Pasolini. But what do we really perceive out of the darkness? As soon as the dark side emerges, we enter into the realm of fancy and the abandoned reason fades away. Out of this deep dive into the depths, some artists make emerge creatures both scary and fascinating. In a famous engraving by Goya there are monsters that spring up, produced by the slumbering reason. These monsters exorcise our fears and this catharsis, paradoxical as it is, reassures and replenishes us. It is because this dark side is lucidity and this interior light, even though it is black, helps us to face the tragic sense of the human destiny. And this is how we shall introduce the works of Isabelle Vialle, Hans Jorgensen, Christophe Biskup and Jean-Marie Cartereau. Each of them, in his own way, shares our anxiety so as to maintain it at the right distance and make us feel stronger.

 Isabelle Vialle

 
             Isabelle Vialle, « Douve », acrylic/canvas, 65x54cm, 2014.

  Isabelle Vialle's paintings have met Yves Bonnefoy's poetry. Her "Douve" series (realized in 2014 during her stay in Greece) refers to the poetry collection, "Du mouvement et de l'immobilité de Douve." The beloved and gone woman invoked by the poet is a multifaceted and virtual creature somewhere between the presence and self-effacement. "Her dress has the colour of the absence of the dead" he said. Isabelle Vialle seized it like a fleeting shadow. The ultimate appearance of a fluid and magnificent finery is captured by the pictorial matter in a perfect harmony of sepulchral shades. Her solemn stillness is intertwined with the mysterious movements and represents an odd metamorphosis where the shade paradoxically relieves from the anxiety. The artist has drawn her inspiration from the light of the pluri centennial tree Greek olive-trees. She transformed their expressive structure to bring out their sumptuous adornments.

  Hans Jorgensen

Hans Jorgensen, Horseman, 60x46cm, 2011

 "The human being can be something terrifying", says Hans Jorgensen. From which infernal worlds do these ambiguous beings full of painful presence emerge from? Carved directly in the parts of the trees, they have kept the vigour of the sap and invoke a set of ragged puppets, our lookalikes torn with the rough screams. A Cerberus dog seems to jealously lock them up but they escape and come back haunting our minds with their immobile state of trance. Hans Jorgensen invokes the myths of all the cultures that are rooted in the universal anguish of our destiny. He blends the Black romanticism, the Nordic legends and an acute sense of the Spanish tragic and gives form to these bodies and figures of the proud horsemen, a sort of a symbol of the mistreated and unhorsed power. Are they the disinherited Don Quixote or the horsemen of an Apocalypse which would have already occurred? These sculptures are inhabited by a wild energy. They invade our imagination with their extraordinary and uncanny presence. They are the mirror of our dark side.

Christophe Biskup

Christophe Biskup, charcoal/paper, 100x70cm, 2014.

In Christophe Biskup's work, (presented at the gallery in 2014), the dark side does not come into being from some strange creatures but from the atmosphere of his drawings. Biskup evokes nocturnal landscapes. They are slowly built up by the stains and traces of the shade that penetrates the paper surface under his fingers after having previously been "prepared" through the same ceremony repeated for each drawing. And then the Romantic Nocturnals emerge and the contours of our certainties fade away with the growing shade. The near and the far vanish into the moonlight. The land and the water merge and fade in the mist. The change of the scenery is radical. The original, non-intentional gesture paradoxically brings out the reminiscence of sensations that we have already lived and experienced one of those days at nightfall. A slight anxiety flows in the air. The dark side reigns in all its splendour.

Jean-Marie Cartereau

JM Cartereau, drawing, from the set "Les racinnes de l'ombre", 28x33cm, 2014.

Jean-Marie Cartereau (also presented at the exhibition "The Drawing"), sails in the territory of the "uncanny" so dear to Freud and the Surrealists. His drawings, just like our nights, communicate with our dark side in order to flourish in the mangroves of the imagination, this in-between of all the kingdoms. The human, the animal, the plant, the mineral create multiple hybridisations and thus prevent us from any attempt of classification. Between the flesh and the bone, the fluid and the solid, life and death, like at dusk, the world of Jean-Marie Cartereau evolves in an intense turbulence. But the extreme precision of the drawing, the fineness of its organization give a fascinating acuity to this apparent chaos. Our dark side thrives on it with relish.

Biographies

Hans Jorgensen

 A graduate of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1976.

Dedicated to painting and spent several years in Morocco and Spain, where he produced numerous exhibitions.

Attaches permanently in France in 1990, he abandoned painting and turned to sculpture.

Exhibited in numerous galleries, France, Germany, Belgium etc. including recently:

2014 Gallery L'âne bleu Marciac - Gallery J.Marc Laik Koblenz Germany

2013 Louftémont Cultural Centre (Belgium) collective exhibition organized by the gallery La Louve. - Gallery Jakez, Pont-Aven Egregore Gallery, Marmande -

In permanence: ART aujourd'hui gallery, Paris.

Isabelle Vialle

 Born in Paris in 1970, graduated in Plastic Arts in Rennes II. After a training in cartoon movies, and a professional stay in graphic arts, it's during an over 3 year residency at the Center of contemporary art "Gingko" in Troyes that Isabelle VIALLE devoted herself entirely to painting.

2008 Roubaix in artist studios of the former factory "at Rita" where she remained for 5 years.

Currently lives and works in Thessaloniki in Greece, where she exhibited recently at the French Institute of Thessaloniki and the Museum of Visual Arts of Heraklion.

In permanence, galerie ART aujourd'hui, Paris.. Exhibition "Eloge du petit format" February 2014- December 2013)

Christophe Biskup

 Born in 1960 in Poland, he lives and works in Paris since 2002. Works in permanence at the ART aujourd'hui Gallery.

Painter, draughtsman, since a couple of year he has come back to the drawing to explore all the means of expression given to him by the charcoal and the paper. If one were to define his creation with a single word it would be the touch. He gets rid of the superfluous, limits its features, leaving only the essence in order to hear the penetrating music of the silence.

Jean-Marie Cartereau

 Born September 1961 in Algeria, lives and works in Toulon.

In 1983 a scholarship enabled him to do an internship at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, decisive for the future direction of his artistic approach to the work on the living and the artificial. Exhibits regularly in France: Marseilles, Biarritz, Montauban (Ingres Museum), Paris, and abroad: Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Portugal, Belgium (Lineart, Ghent). Now in private and public collections (Marseille - Toulon - Aix-en-Provence - La Seyne/Mer - Mie, Japan - Red Fox Press, Ireland). Permanently: ART aujourd'hui gallery, Paris.