The Paul-Valéry museum in Sète highlights the work of painters Brigitte Aubignac and Nazanin Pouyandeh

It is not one but two temporary exhibitions that the Paul-Valéry museum is offering until March 2, 2025. Visitors are invited on one side to discover the world of Brigitte Aubignac and on the other to delve into the work by Nazanin Pouyandeh. Two women, two painters with totally different backgrounds and styles. “We brought them together de facto but without having a unifying theme”indicates museum director Stéphane Tarroux. A comparison that the Sétois museum has already encountered by inaugurating, in 2014, its first biennial in the “4 à 4” series which highlighted the work of four artists. This time, the space devoted to the two painters is intended to be larger.

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A painted canvas for Sète

Enough to allow Brigitte Aubignac to present a quasi-retrospective of her work. Works from 2003 rub shoulders here with more recent paintings, in a wide variety of formats. Like this imposing oil, Grande salle LIIpainted especially for the Sète exhibition. “I thought of the light of Sète, which I love very much, with the dazzling sun of the Mediterranean”she explains about the yellow that predominates there.

This panorama through more than twenty years of painting offers to see introspective work, around the intimate. Like this series The Boys (2005-2008) where Brigitte Aubignac represented her son and his friends during adolescence, “this age under construction, this moment of grace that I found lovely to paint”. Or like the series called Makeup (2014-2015) where the artist depicts himself in his bathroom applying powder or pencil. Works – some shown for the first time in France – which feature in this recent cycle of paintings called Statues etc.where the painter affirms her attachment to the history of art. A story that she revisits, for example, by mixing the famous Little dancer from Degas to Three Graces by Pradier.

A reflection on painting

This is where the comparison with the work of Nazanin Pouyandeh might arise. The exhibition dedicated to the painter born in Iran is in fact divided into three parts: Dream Scenes, Lucretia and Painting Painting. “It is a tribute to the art of painting as well as a reflection on the medium of painting,” she points out. There are numerous references to Gauguin or Bonnard in his paintings as well as those to African, Persian and even Japanese cultural heritage. As in That’s itin reference to these erotic engravings, originating from the land of the rising sun. The act of painting is itself questioned with all the possibilities it contains. In Diane’s PondNazanin Pouyandeh is shown in her studio, surrounded by sketches and various paintings. A way to illustrate “this moment of doubt for the artist and this ability to make the same painting in different ways”.

Compositions with captivating realism which nevertheless leave a major place for dreaminess. In the section dedicated to Dreams, Nazanin Pouyandeh loads her scenes with eroticism or violence, representing the female body on numerous occasions. As in The Uprising of Black Soulsshowing the woman’s fight with herself, or in The Oilers. Women stripped of stereotypes as those painted by Brigitte Aubignac could be, in their own way.