Hélène Delanoë
An alchemical journey in three acts
Anthological exhibition (works 2010-2022)
In an evocative with the architecture of the Renaissance venue of the Palmieri Foundation in Lecce, on display the works by Hélène Delanoë, a French artist who lives and works between Lyon and Paris. With An alchemical journey in three acts, Primo Piano LivinGallery presents, through the formula of an anthological exhibition, a selection of works created from 2010 to today. The event, under auspices by Municipality of Lecce, and curated by Dores Sacquegna, opens on Saturday 30 April at 7:30 pm in the presence of the Artist, the Mayor Carlo Salvemini and the audience. During the opening day, the soundpainting performance of the composer and musician Angelo Urso, who will evoke some of the artist’s works in live music. The exhibition will remain open until May 13, 2022.
The exhibition
The Anthological Exhibition of Contemporary Art by French artist Hélène Delanoë offers a body of works from 2010 to today, divided into three thematic cycles of which: The volcanic matter, The journey and the stereotype of the other, the homage to the pictorial culture of far East. Three moments of artistic investigation that outline a path imbued with a strong anthropological and exploratory connotation that goes hand in hand with her life, with her cultural anthropology studies started in Africa, with her activity as a psychoanalyst, with her travels around to the world and with encounters with great artists, her contemporaries.
The first cycle is dedicated to the evolution of the world from its primordial birth with Volcanic Matter, to its magmatic, incandescent, and tarry flows, where the sign and the form are swallowed by colours, which mixed with wax and other techniques create grainy surfaces, scratchy, such as cracks in the earth’s crust or volcanic eruptions. Here we find works such as Noir (2010) or Matiere Volcanique Rouge (2012), created after studies and direct observation at the Etna volcano in Italy, at Teide in the Canary Islands in Spain and on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean at east of Madagascar. From 2017 the works of the chromatic and alchemical scale such as Volcan de mer, Catharsis, Transmutation and Moisson du ciel (2018) which concludes this cycle.
The second cycle is linked to the theme of travel and the stereotype of the other and the different, in which the artist pays homage to the exploratory curiosity of travellers between the 16th and 19th centuries with mixed media works and various assemblages composed of photographs, engravings and old maps, which become the traces of an intuitive handwriting and which evoke the mythical anthropocentric journeys of Christopher Columbus in the Americas and beyond. This cycle includes works such as A la découverte du nouveau monde and Lanzarote (2012-2016). The journey continues with the works of 2019 to which L’ile au Tresor and Love belong, a work that speaks of the identity crisis trapped in a self-referential system composed of the globe, in which only love can perform that function of antidote to the pathology of the post-technological age. Art explodes, becomes circular, redefines the habitat, creates a dimension of perceptual experience and is intertwined in natural and artificial elements as in the case of the Parcours work that closes this cycle.
In the third and last cycle, the homage is to the pictorial culture of the Far East, to its notion of emptiness, serenity, Zen evocation. These paintings evoke mountains, water and skies and are distinguished from the first cycle by the increasing variable of light, expressed in shades of grey, blue and creamy white. Here the borders expand, become liquid, metamorphic, sonorous, and fragmented in diptychs and triptychs and we find works such as Blue (2010), Arches sonores (2014), Mouvement et calm (2016), Blanc Griffe, (2016-2017), Sans Titre, (2021) and the last works of 2022 dedicated to the Planètes bleues, and to the Bleu des lointains, a new imaginary journey into space and the sounds of natural elements.
In her flow between one cycle and another, Hélène Delanoë catapults us into a changing, transitory, plural, dreamlike path, which develops the metaphorical element, which enhances the plasticity of the material, which evokes movement and sound. Between perception and rhythm, her works offer a narrative, anthropological and psychological analysis, which leads us on an imaginary, alchemical and exploratory journey inside and outside the borders of the world.
Art and Life
Hélène Delanoë lives and works between Lyon and Paris in France. She is an anthropologist and psychoanalyst, she has lived in Africa where she has had the opportunity to visit many places from the South to the North of the continent. Returning to Paris in May 1968, she settled in the Marais district, where she attended the carving workshop of the engraver Attali first and by Serge Kantorowicz, subsequently, also pursuing her work of urban anthropology with historians of art and architects. Among her colleagues and friends are the artists Guillaume Corneille (of the Cobra group), Guy Roussille, Georges Jeanclos, Daniel Bordier and Breyten Breytenbach, African poet and painter, imprisoned in South Africa, asking for his release during the struggle against Apartheid. 1983 is the year of her first solo exhibition at the Marais Noir gallery, where she exhibited a series of large Moroccan-inspired pastels. In 1997, her work Papiers Déchirés, won the First Prize of the City of Paris. Since 1998 she has exhibited in the Parisian capital but also abroad with solo and group exhibitions, biennials, art fairs and museums in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Austria, Lithuania, South Korea among others.
The composer and soundpainter
Angelo Urso is an original presence in the Apulian music scene. Jazz music composer and double bass player, he counts significant collaborations with masters and musicians such as Almoraima among others. The Mediterranean is the place that inspires the sounds by artist, whose music evokes a hidden desire for travel and encounters. Among his compositions is the Progetto Vulcano where he makes use of percussionists-master craftsmen who give rhythmic breath using the beating of iron as a percussion instrument, for a completely innovative concert for Bells and Orchestra. Expert in the technique of Soundpainting, in 2020 he realizes the CD The Shape with the participation of the Bud Powell sound-painting orchestra. He plays in the Ghetonia traditional music formation and collaborates with the flutist Antonio Cotardo.
On display, the Primo Piano Edizioni catalog, with critical texts by the authors and the works presented in Lecce.
Primo Piano thanks the Salento Contino Wines as technical sponsor (http://www.continowines.it/)
Info Date & Location
From 30 April to 13 May 2022
Palmieri Foundation, Vico Dei Sotterranei, Lecce
Open every day from 11:00m to 13:00am – from 17:30pm to 21:00pm
Sunday morning and other times by appointment. Free entry
Info: primopianogallery@gmail.com | Tel + 39 349 37 20 659
