UA work of Art never emerges ex nihilo: it emerges, accompanies and transcends a story, a moment, an encounter. At Lydie Arickx, this mechanism, all in all ordinary but oh so true, sharpens in tune with the ephemeral: “It's always encounters with the moment”, confides the artist, born in 1954 in Villecresnes (94 ). These moments are magnetized around heterogeneous elements: animal skulls, cowhide gleaned while hiking, bronze scraps, sheep's wool, clay, feathers, pigments… So many raw materials that she works under the impulse of a mysterious impulse, immediate or delayed, thus embracing a new moment nourished by experimentation and an almost shamanic vitality.
Anglet: Lydie Arickx takes over the Contemporary Art Center
The exhibition “The Great Being”, dedicated to Lydie Arickx, opens its doors at the Villa Beatrix-Enea and at the Georges-Pompidou gallery in Anglet. The opportunity to better understand the work of an artist of international stature, who came as a neighbor from her Landes workshop
“In my work, we often move from one world to another,” underlines the woman who, since 1991, has set up her workshop in the Landes, in Angresse. Life and death, gravity and weightlessness, figuration and abstraction, light and darkness… So many polarities which interact from one piece to another or at the heart of the same work.
Scales and materials
This dynamic permeates the exhibition displayed in Anglet in two distinct locations. At the Villa Beatrix Enea, around twenty pieces play with scales and materials. “Resurrection”, a spectral silhouette both imposing and light, levitates in front of an abstract and vegetal chromatic explosion – “Life-size”, with neon green hues on abrasive paper.
So many raw materials that she works under the impulse of a mysterious impulse, immediate or deferred
Further on, an oversized man walks suspended upside down, his feet anchored to the ceiling. In a nearby cabinet of curiosities, a gargoyle carved from driftwood sits next to a folding ruler evoking a cross, while an astonishing magnetite sculpture seems to transform the coldness of the ore into a soft, almost organic material, similar to fur.
Unpublished pieces
Two magnificent dry pastels, including a portrait of her grandmother at the toilet dating from the 1970s, enrich a narrow selection retracing forty-five years of a career whose works appear in major public collections, notably at the National Museum of modern art – Center Pompidou, the Palais de Tokyo, the National Center for Plastic Arts (CNAP) and in public spaces.
Emilie Drouinaud / SO
“Resurrection”, a spectral silhouette both imposing and light, levitates in front of an abstract and vegetal chromatic explosion, “Nature size”.
Some new pieces punctuate the route, including a sculpture and a painted bas-relief, as well as a vast installation specially designed for the Galerie Georges-Pompidou, located across the street. There, a monumental black and white fresco, made with charcoal using a technique that the artist has been refining for years, is inspired by the Troumouse circus, in the Hautes-Pyrénées. This non-figurative landscape, both grandiose and immersive, plunges the visitor into the heart of telluric forces, into a living matter where the moment meets eternity.
Anglet (64). “The great being – Lydie Arickx”. Until March 15, Contemporary Art Center (Villa Beatrix and Galerie Pompidou). Free entry Tuesday to Friday, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Open during holidays, closed on December 25 and 1is January.
