exhibitions
see more
PAST EXHIBITIONS
PLAY!
Pola Carmen & Prudence Dudan
April 2023
PLAY !
Pola Carmen & Prudence Dudan
Amelie, maison d'art exhibits for the first time in Belgium !
Prudence Dudan
It is a grid, a maze, a knit. This is not the case according to Pola Carmen who only sees lines, in one direction and the other, an endless series of abscissas and ordinates, just a drawing without purpose, in short. For fifteen years she has been drawing freehand lines, in oil pastel or oil sticks, on primed canvases stretched like a bow, “as resonant as the skin of a drum”. On the plain backgrounds ranging from gray to coffee cream, its threads tremble and bend, purposely “crooked”. Geranium red, Prussian blue, antique white, lemon yellow, Chinese orange… The single color, bright or muted depending on the mood, tries not to distract the eye which, trapped in this floating net, always manages to pass between its narrow meshes. Pola Carmen, amiable, provides him with an exit door so that he can get lost at leisure before rushing into the breach opened here or there, rarely in the center. The location of this void does not respond to any logic, nor do these interlacings take a real motif as a model, a known object. Pola Carmen admits only one influence, that of the sober and systematic art of Pierrette Bloch, Agnès Martin, Brice Marden, Georges Noël, or Marinette Cueco. These large monochromes whose edges keep, in memory, its successive gestures are called “Possible”. This simple word, designating what can be done or what can happen, is well suited to its easy work, left to the free interpretation of each.
Virginie Huet
Pola Carmen
In the beginning, there is the page. Filled with words and images, it is never white. Prudence Dudan marks it according to her mood: monotype, drawing, painting, collage... The choices are multiple, the gestures precise. They hide at the same time that they reveal the original content, which says something other than what was disguised. Clouds pass in front of a Greek goddess, a dune covers a Spanish vase, herbs escape from a Thai fish trap. Prudence Dudan collects beautiful and old books on various subjects, from kitchen kits to Courbet paintings. Each one provides her with a sufficiently dense repertoire for the mind and the hand to warm up, finding in the repetition of the motif, the easing of the gesture, the means of a gymnastics, a kind of active reading. The effort is weak because pleasure prevails, and things are arranged randomly as one makes a bouquet. Prudence Dudan improvises. In series and in color, she teases the surface of the borrowed supports with the malice of Baldessari, and the joy of Matisse. Her free associations divert the attention, and the object of study, taken out of its context, does not inform in the same way. Only the sum provides the meaning, which slips through his fingers, from the literal to the figurative. Tired of being seen from known angles, plants, chairs, glaciers, forks, shells undergo a metamorphosis. Because finally, his parallel encyclopedia invests the field of the dream.
Virginie Huet
