ART PARIS ART FAIR

Art & Commitment. Exile

Miguel Branco, Jean Dubuffet, Yang Jiechang, Dani Karavan, Evi Keller, Rui Moreira, Jean-Paul Philippe, Paul Rebeyrolle, Nicolas de Staël, Mark Tobey, Maria Ana Vasco Costa, Zarina, Antonella Zazzera

Grand Palais Ephémère, Paris, France

Foires

Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger's Booth, Art Paris, 2022<br/>© Jeanne Bucher Jaeger — **Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger's Booth, Art Paris, 2022**
Grand Palais Ephémère, Paris
Photograph by Jean-Louis Losi

Paul Rebeyrolle, selection Art & Commitment, A Focus on the French Scene by Marc Donnadieu

The instinctive and generous painting of Paul Rebeyrolle established itself on the French art scene thanks to its singularity, radicality and raw power. Perfectly in phase with the times, it defended a freedom of tone and rebellion against the authorities, enslavement and alienation and the fight for independence and emancipation for one and all. Incorporating found objects that could be considered barbarous (wire, animal hide), La Vache rouge (1998) from the series “Monétarisme” announces a world in decline in which man’s cynicism leads him to destroy the human condition and his relationship with the living world. On the other hand, the almost magical density of Le Chien blanc (2000) from the series “Madagascar” announces its intention to be an ode to difference, to a new-found relationship with nature and the pleasure of living. “What is happening in the world seems to be stron- ger and more dramatic than painting, which could perhaps seem rather vain […], but that corresponds to my way of being a painter and it is the only way. […] I paint every day and yet I wonder if I don’t think just as much about life and people’s living conditions as painting. I believe that these two obsessions, painting and contemporary history are inextricably entwined in me.”

Marc Donnadieu

Zarina Hashmi, selection “Exile : dispossession and resistance” by Amanda Abi Khalil

Finding somewhere to take refuge is far from easy. The logistics of exile and its inherent itinerancy mean resettling at each new stage of your life, constantly making a new home for yourself until you finally elect a definitive home. But what happens when this mobility, this homelessness is never-ending? What refuge exists for the dispossessed when a home is lacking? Perhaps a sheet of paper is enough? Sinking Boat with a heartbeat (2016) brings together fragility, finesse, humility and the force of collage, in other words it resembles the life of Zarina herself, over which her entire body of work looks back.

Zarina (1937-2020) was born in Aligarh in the North of India and was living in London when she embarked on her final journey. In 1947, the partition of India and the imposition of an artificial border set the artist, who was just ten years old at the time, on a path that would be marked by displacement. Her life of exile continued for more than twenty years as she followed her husband, a diplomat, on his many postings, which she retraces in Cities I Called Home (2010). The drawings and woodblock prints that made her famous followed her throughout the course of her life, expressing the alienation of exile and geographical dislocation, of being forced to abandon one’s home.

As Zarina once admitted: “I don’t feel at home anywhere, but the idea of home follows me wherever I go”.

Amanda Abi Khalil