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Ange Monnoyeur Gallery

France / Portugal

From brushed aluminium to porcelain and mixed media. When art and design merge, the result is an alliance between living worlds, a subtle work of light, colour and transparency. Art confronts us with the universe and places man within a living structure. It is an opening, a mirror, a dialogue accessible to all. The works tell stories, illuminate our gaze and create an echo within us. Material and light are expressions of freedom and humanism.

Gallery owner Ange Monnoyeur works with emerging and established contemporary artists at the intersection of painting, photography, digital art and printmaking. Ange Monnoyeur founded her first gallery in the heart of Europe's art and cultural capital, Paris, and later opened a second in Lisbon. Here, art meets design and elegance.
Ange Monnoyeur's mission is to make artists known in France and around the world by promoting different talents and artistic approaches. This creates a fruitful international exchange. She organises artists' residencies in her restored chateau in south-west France and works with American collectors in the contemporary art market in the USA. Surrounded by artists in her family and inspired by her father, an art collector and founder of Groupe Monnoyeur, a family business heavily involved in art sponsorship, Ange has always been involved in the art world.

Artists at ART INTERNATIONAL ZURICH 2023:
Juliette Clovis
Nicolas Dubreuille
Yannick Fournié
Victoire D'Harcourt
Eric Roux-Fontaine
Claudia Meyer
Ayline Olukman

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YANNICK FOURNIÉ

The contemplation of a figurative painting can also lead to a photographic exploration. Yannick Fournié is a figurative and narrative painter. In his works, he invites the viewer to reflect on painting by exploring matter and colour. In his artistic approach, he has moved away from realism and towards abstraction. He now continues his previous path with photographic means, seeing these productions as an extension of his painting.
Ambiguity is probably the word that best characterises both Yannick Fournié and his painting. Between power and sensitivity, anima and animus, social identity and profound self-reflection. After an atypical life in the art world (including a stint as a paratrooper in the French army), Yannick only took up canvas and paintbrush in 2010, at the age of 38. It was like a consummation, a personal maturation that led him to the urgent desire to express the intensity bubbling inside him and his search for meaning through this artistic and sensitive medium.
His theme is the question of identity, with all its duality between what we are inside and the codes of our society to which we conform on the outside. Yannick Fournié plays with this ambiguity. He pushes it to the limit in order to sublimate it and, in the end, to touch the viewer. Every painting by Yannick Fournié, without exception and whatever the theme of the series he is developing, questions the human traits of contemporary identity. His works shock by what they provoke in the viewer.
Technically and aesthetically, Yannick Fournié alternates between acrylic and oil as long as it allows him to express his ideas and emotions. The works are created in the moment. The varnish with which he finishes his works enhances their brilliance. The precision and accuracy of the execution are impressive. His technique, close to realism, gives the painting a vibrant liveliness. The palette is contemporary and strong, but always perfectly balanced. Even when the subject is in semi-darkness, the chiaroscuro, which he masters to perfection, illuminates the space in which they are set.

«La préparation de mes tableaux commence par des supports photographiques, des images que je réalise moi-même pour recréer, scénographier mon univers. J'en détourne alors le sens, les formes, les lumières et les couleurs pour y intégrer cette texture qui m'est essentielle, avec un geste qu'on ne retrouve que dans la peinture.» - Yannick Fournié

«Contrairement à la peinture sur toile où les blancs se rajoutent en dernier pour garder pureté et clarté, j'ai choisi, sur ce support de retirer partiellement la matière pour laisser vibrer et refléter la lumière sur l'aluminium. Entre ombre et lumière la vibration et le reflet apparaissent selon l'endroit d'où on regarde.» - Yannick Fournié

«I belong to a rich and dense generation where everything jostles with everything else: Pop Art, Comics, Street Art, the brilliance of the Internet and social networking, of reality television, contemporary audio-visual trash. I am the euphoric, baffled witness to a social, economic and ecological disintegration that I sometimes find beautiful.» - Yannick Fournié

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JULIETTE CLOVIS

Juliette Clovis, born in 1978, is a French artist living in the south-east of France. After studying law and art history at the Ecole du Louvre, she worked in the media industry. In 2004, she graduated in graphic design from the Ecole des Gobelins and decided to devote herself entirely to her art. Her work is now exhibited worldwide, including curated exhibitions such as "Kleureyck Van Eyck's Colours in Design" at the Design Museum Gent (2021), "Colours" at the Tripostal Museum in Lille (2020), "Magie Noire" at the Four des Casseaux Museum in Limoges (2020), "Gaïa reborn" at the Urban Nation Museum in Berlin (2019), at the Revelation Biennial at the Grand Palais in Paris (2019) or at the Fahrenheit Biennial at the American Museum of Ceramic Art of California (2018).
Juliette's work explores two main lines: the idea of the cycle of life, which is incessant and universal, and the constant search for balance, which comes from contrasts and opposites.
As a multidisciplinary artist, the mastery of technical means has always played a central role in her work. Juliette is part of a new generation of contemporary artists who embrace the gestures and excellence of craftsmanship to bring their artistic vision to contemporary art. Her current work focuses on sculptures in her favourite material, porcelain.
In her latest works, the artist explores the ambivalence of man in his relationship with the nature that surrounds him. Reflecting on man's presence in the world, which leads to the progressive destruction of the natural environment, the artist objectifies it in her sculptures, in which fauna and flora seem to adapt to their surroundings. Combining ambiguity and metaphor, her work oscillates between a prophetic image heralding the birth of a new creature, a human body with a half-animal, half-plant face, and the onset of death caused by a hungry nature reclaiming its rights. The symbols are powerful and ubiquitous. Snakes, butterflies, chrysanthemums, vanity, eggs. Classic symbols that have been used so often in the history of art to represent life and death or the cycle of life. The artist, who is mainly inspired by the Baroque spirit, loves to mix references and play with influences and codes to create a harmonious world full of contrasts and differences.

ENDLESS Series by Juliette Clovis
The 2019 'Endless' series is inspired by a small, endangered mammal: the pangolin. Like this animal, thousands of porcelain scales are intertwined to form a carapace that covers the entire surface of the sculptures. The final forms draw an abstract, sinuous line, reminiscent of the curve of a snake. Like a Gordian knot, the sculptures in this series have no beginning and no end. A hybrid, endless and reptilian creature of immaculate beauty, created from intertwining and expanding forms. The course of things seems to be reversed. The cycle of life takes a different turn, and instead of disappearing, a new creature emerges from the scales. A powerful new form emerges from the fragile porcelain shards. But the delicacy of the porcelain softens the tension. Strength and fragility balance each other to create a new form of harmony.

KINETIC GARDEN series by Juliette Clovis
The sculptures of the 'Kinetic Garden' series are composed of hundreds of scales in white or coloured porcelain or covered with precious metals. Like the knots of the 'Endless' series, these works feature abstract lines contrasted with a selection of very rich colours. These are characteristic of the artist's Baroque influence. The spheres and wall rosettes invite us to stroll through a geometric and hypnotic garden where the line is clearly curved.

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ERIC ROUX FONTAINE

Like the painters of the 19th century who made the "Grand tour", Eric Roux Fontaine's various stays in India and Central America form the substratum of his painting (there is a pendulum movement between the work done in the solitude of the studio and the need to "confront" his painting with the world, as if to test its resistance; it is this and many other things that he seeks, isolated in his hut in the heart of the Central American jungle. "From the whole world to the heart of the world," Blaise Cendrars would have written. Back and forth, systole and diastole, like a vital impulse that drives him at each stage to take his painting to new territories. From his exchanges with Borucas shamans (indigenous community of Costa Rica) or Drabarnis (gypsy healers), Eric has brought back a particular vision of space and time, experienced or dreamed. For Eric it is a matter of "sifting the world". This is translated on the canvas by a succession of thin layers of paint, superimposed, the raw material is distilled, surfaces on support, the various glazes cover or reveal at leisure pieces of dream, until the canvas becomes a palimpsest of its inner territory, its intimate geography, emitting this sought-after vibration. The narrative tension thus effectively combines the gesture with the image: that of an artist immersed in his work, questioning the fragile place of man in the midst of nature.
Faced with the depth of Eric Roux-Fontaine's landscapes, the viewer is plunged into a universe that belongs only to painting. These successive shifts towards a dreamlike universe bring Eric's painting closer to what has been called "magic realism", which pervades the literature of Central America and Eastern Europe. There was a time when the elements of life distilled love; a time when the nomad and the dreamer were in sympathy. Their lazy souls still knew how to meditate and contemplate. From there, silence embraced sleep like an immense wave: a sheet of imaginary silk that now hangs from the lips of an artist whose words never betray.
Text: Damien Chantrenne, directeur et conservateur du musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Dreux. France

« Peindre, c'est accepter de descendre un fleuve sans savoir où il va nous mener » - Eric Roux Fontaine

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AYLINE OLUKMAN

Ayline Olukman is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores notions of the unconscious, loss and humanity. She works in photography, painting, writing and drawing.
Ayline was born in Strasbourg, France in 1981 and graduated from the École des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg in 2005. Between 2006 and 2015, Ayline Olukman alternated between working in her studio in Strasbourg and travelling, which she used as research periods for photography and writing. This period resulted in exhibitions in France, but also in New York, Brussels, Basel, London, Gothenburg, Shanghai or Istanbul, as well as the publication of two books by Médiapop, Small Eternity (2012) and America (2015), in which text and photography intersect. After a residency at Point B in Brooklyn in 2015, she lives and works in New York until 2018. In June 2018, she was nominated as a Voies-Off finalist at the Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles. In October 2018, she participated in the residency of the International Art Centre of Shangjin in China. She won the prize of the Verzasca Foto Festival 2019 (Switzerland), where she will be exhibited. Her third book, La Mue, published in 2019, was selected by the PH Museum as one of the best photography books of 2019. She has been nominated for the Prix Mentor by Freelens in 2020.

« Maintenir ma quête de l'errance, c'est une quête en elle-même. J'ai fini par admettre que la question du déplacement est centrale dans ce que je fais. Un non-lieu commun à chacun. Pendant longtemps, dans ce rapport à la nostalgie, j'étais dans le désenchantement de ce temps que rien ne retient. Puis, j'ai réalisé que non. L'image n'est qu'une image mais elle a un statut réel ; elle existe par elle-même, ce qui provoque un certain déséquilibre. D'où mon interrogation constante sur la création elle-même. » - Ayline Olukman

« Tel un peintre classique, j'ai mis en scène cette série de photos dans mon atelier de peinture et en extérieur que j'utilise tel un décor. Je vois ces paysages intérieurs/extérieurs comme le lieu où le corps et la nature se rencontrent, négocient leurs différences et similitudes. Mon étude se concentre sur le processus de création en soi, la recherche d'un sens d'appartenance au monde et au corps au travers de la mémoire. La limite de la peau est une géographie intime et pourtant universelle qui est le fil rouge de mon travail, un jeu de mise en abime où la notion d'échelle et de réalité se perd. Il me semble important de rester dans un rapport aux éléments, à la nature ou à la route, mais aussi qu'on ne puisse pas les identifier clairement. Il me faut englober les choses sans leurs limites. Plus je suis entrée dans la volonté de me comprendre moi-même, plus j'ai pris conscience que je faisais partie d'un tout. La mue est la membrane qui contient chaque chose. Le regard est sollicité́ dans un échange continu entre l'extérieur et l'intérieur, le reflet du miroir est une main tendue vers le spectateur. » - Ayline Olukman

La série 'The great escape'
« Par la route ou l'immersion du corps dans les éléments naturels la série ci-jointe parle du désir de liberté. Nous suivons cette femme dans un 'road movie' qu'elle se crée. Elle conduit par plaisir des autoroutes au caractère infinies, aux carrefours elle choisit sa direction par instinct. Elle se repose au bord des piscines des motels. Épopée contemporaine d'un monde rempli de nostalgie qu'elle s'approprie. C'est le mythe du désert californien revisité, le corps est vivant, exalté par les sensations de l'eau, du soleil et de l'air sur la peau. » - Ayline Olukman

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VICTOIRE D'HARCOURT

Victoire d'Harcourt has always been interested in urban planning and the architecture of large spaces. She has redesigned museums, cemeteries, beaches and all kinds of large spaces.
French artist Victoire d'Harcourt was born in Bordeaux in 1966. Since her childhood, which she spent in France, Tahiti and Madagascar, she has been fascinated by large spaces and colours. She trained at the Atelier Paul Fleury, the Ecole du Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Ecole du Louvre.
As a sculptor, painter and photographer, she has a penchant for pushing the boundaries of reality. Starting with black and white photographs, which she takes and develops herself without losing sight of the subject, Victoire d'Harcourt recomposes her images with large areas of colour. Inspired by large spaces and architecture, the artist combines techniques to create compositions that combine figuration and abstraction. Her photographs lead us into an ambivalent world that seems real and raises all the questions of existence.
An important part of her work is devoted to sculpture. Her abstract sculptures are expressions of connection, strength and fragility, using both bronze and marble powder.
Victoire d'Harcourt creates intimate sculptures as well as monumental works that form alliances in their balance. At first glance, they are just bold curves that gently merge into each other. Strong and confident, forever united, these indestructible and indissoluble unions give the reassuring impression that nothing can separate them. Everything appears solid and stable. But on closer inspection, this omnipotence is fragile, the great circles hanging by silken threads. It is impossible to separate them, to strive for freedom at the risk of destroying everything. But it is also impossible to cut oneself off from the world.
This is the quintessence of Victoire d'Harcourt's works, which often express a double feeling: strength and fragility in a precarious balance. The question is not what holds it together, but what it is based on.

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NICOLAS DUBREUILLE

The wild geometry of Nicolas Dubreuille
Nicolas Dubreuille came to art in a roundabout way: after starting out in visual communications, a stint as a graphic designer and an intense involvement with ceramics, the artist turned to sculpture and painting in the mid-2010s.
Gradually, he subjected his artistic practice to the language of geometry. He has imbued it with a playful spirit that excludes the rigour often associated with this art form.
The vastness and dynamism of Nicolas Dubreuilles' creative inspiration are expressed above all in his sculptures. His creations in metal or painted materials have no mass and move between abstraction and figuration: although they are the result of the intersection of flat geometric surfaces, their overall appearance is reminiscent of the human figure. The arrangement of forms concentrates on the vertical, while limb-like elements extend to the sides. There are also descriptive details, such as a surface hollowed out by a small eye. Nevertheless, there is a gradual development towards a more abstract sculpture.
This is largely due to his artistic process. Dubreuille acquired a treasure trove of forms with which he shaped his work like an infinite alphabet. The creation of a work results from the gradual addition of elements that were originally left over from his earlier sculptures and were not intended for use. The final appearance of the work thus depends on chance since it is no longer the three-dimensional realisation of a preparatory study. Nicolas Dubreuille's sculptures undoubtedly belong to the genre of sculpture because of the virtual volumes they create, the rhythms and the particular tensions they generate in space. Nevertheless, they to the two-dimensional syntax of painting. They play above all with the use of a single, bright, luminous colour and have a presence that combines the elegance of Minimalism with the humour of Pop or, for example, Antony Caro and Keith Haring, two artists from very different worlds but equally important to him.
Colour also plays an important role in his paintings, but unlike sculpture, he explores its merits in its variety and diversity. Since 2015, the artist has created a series of paintings based on the use of areas of colour on canvas or rice paper to give the work more substance. The skilfully orchestrated distribution of these areas of colour in the two dimensions of the canvas is based on the combination of horizontal, vertical and diagonal rhythms. Their staggered superimpositions and juxtapositions create gradients, transparency and effects of depth.
With impressive mastery and skill, Nicolas Dubreuille seems to be testing the experimental and intuitive nature of his approach: From one work to another, the composition is almost identical, but the colours, the nuances, the tones and the intensity of the light change. In some paintings the compositional elements stand out clearly against the monochrome background, contributing to an impression of lightness and floating. In other cases, the background and the forms face each other in an equal relationship and merge on the surface. A series of works limited to the colours black and white, and their gradations mark a moment of pause and express the need to refocus on one's goals. Although there is a preference for rectangular forms and their derivatives, this does not exclude the creation of paintings in which circular forms predominate. In this respect, some paintings recall the experimental studies of the pioneers of geometric abstraction or, more recently, of the great master of colour, Piero Dorazio.
Recently, Nicolas Dubreuille has taken a new direction in his painting: his compositions have become brighter and clearer, structured by the division of broad bands of colour. Their overlapping, which pushes against the material limits of the frame, defines a space of planar depth and creates a sense of tension. To enhance the visual impact of his painting, the artist has reduced his palette to six colours, applied flat and with absolute precision in the tradition of American hard edge, without modulating effects or gradations. The viewer's gaze is thus focused on the relationship between the elements, on the play of balance and tension that dynamically structures the picture plane.
Making colour and geometry his best allies, Nicolas Dubreuille's art is animated by a desire to explore and innovate. Both his paintings and his sculptures, which have an intense plastic force, do not conform to any system and have a very contemporary resonance with their simultaneously pop and minimalist spirit.

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CLAUDIA MEYER

Light, Energy and Materiality
While metaphysics begins with being and nothingness, Claudia Meyer's art shows us matter and light. The essence of the artist's work is therefore flow and energy. To unite these, her creative impulse uses all the materials that nature produces: mainly wood, but also those invented by man: Metal and plexiglass. With great freedom, the artist's hand forms squares, rectangles, walls and installations that are illuminated by the material and revealed by the light. The light, in turn, combines with the shadows of the structures, their angles and volumes.
Mondrian once said: "Art is artificial and nature is natural". Claudia Meyer's art describes the imaginary in the world of reality and matter. It is enhanced by the play of light, which in turn combines with the shadows of the structures, their angles and volumes. The work is always structured. It allows us to exist with the artist. The generosity of the brushstroke, the plasticity of the lines tell us that matter is filled with this luminous and translucent emptiness. Then the surprise: something appears. It is the materiality of the flow of energy. Movement appears behind the stillness of the forms. These spirals, these script-like signs, imperceptible yet strongly suggestive. They are reminiscent of Japanese haiku or ancient scripts.
Claudia Meyer's immanent, material work tells us about the transcendent. The transcendence that is so close to us, the transcendence of feelings, of sensitivity. But also of life, of today. In the midst of the temporal, his art confronts us with the universe, it puts man back into a living world. He illuminates matter as if to say that reality is our language and that the artist is there to help us see it. He speaks of air, water and fire.
While Baudelaire shows us a world in which "scents, colours and sounds respond to each other", Claudia Meyer shows us a living matter in which light and energy open up the horizon of the perceptible. In this sense, her art is an opening, a mirror, a dialogue open to all. By uniting forms and materials that are so often separated, she communicates the unity of the human being and the beauty of all that surrounds us.

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