Emilie Arnoux

Hovering

2023

Emilie Arnoux hails from Normandy, France. From a young age, she became fascinated by the ocean and the laid back lifestyle surf-culture engenders. Her work captures the divine energ...

The medium of choice for Do Byung-Kyu, born in Cheonan, Korea, is dolls: they are both his conceptions and his physical expression. At the same time dolls are also the perfect tool for communicating the artist’s inner self. Expressing himself by means of dolls liberates Do from the restrictions of the mundane world. By embodying in the form of dolls his actions and thoughts, dreams and desires, and even the instincts lying in the depths of the subconscious, he transcends the secular boundaries. Dolls are his alter ego, his other self that he can construct precisely the way he wants. Sublimating the experiences and memories from his youth into various subjects of desire, Do uses dolls to paint a descriptive picture of the ambiguous feelings of contradictions from his childhood when he would abuse and kill a plaything, for example a frog, then bury the body in solemn mourning over its death. These sexual or violent games from his childhood are not likely to be limited to Do’s experiences alone. Most of us can vaguely remember indulging in sadistic acts of sexual love against a doll. Rising above a child’s simple curiosity, it is an intuitive game of the senses we play by ourselves. In a number of Do’s paintings, sticky liquid can be observed dripping down a doll’s face. This brings back recollections of the life inside our mothers’ womb where we were also enveloped by mucous waters, like the amniotic fluid. It refuses contact with the anything, and nothing wants to touch it either. The shape of such a mucous liquid is a protective layer sheltering the intrinsic identity and desires of man. It is also a substitution that satisfies the ego’s instincts otherwise suppressed by social norms. The dolls’ eyes...

Sensational paintings of glass vessels come to life in this dynamic exhibition featuring new works by Korean artist Inkyeong Baek. Demonstrating an uncanny ability to capture her sub...

The medium of choice for Do Byung-Kyu, born in Cheonan, Korea, is dolls: they are both his conceptions and his physical expression. At the same time dolls are also the perfect tool for communicating the artist’s inner self. Expressing himself by means of dolls liberates Do from the restrictions of the mundane world. By embodying in the form of dolls his actions and thoughts, dreams and desires, and even the instincts lying in the depths of the subconscious, he transcends the secular boundaries. Dolls are his alter ego, his other self that he can construct precisely the way he wants. Sublimating the experiences and memories from his youth into various subjects of desire, Do uses dolls to paint a descriptive picture of the ambiguous feelings of contradictions from his childhood when he would abuse and kill a plaything, for example a frog, then bury the body in solemn mourning over its death. These sexual or violent games from his childhood are not likely to be limited to Do’s experiences alone. Most of us can vaguely remember indulging in sadistic acts of sexual love against a doll. Rising above a child’s simple curiosity, it is an intuitive game of the senses we play by ourselves. In a number of Do’s paintings, sticky liquid can be observed dripping down a doll’s face. This brings back recollections of the life inside our mothers’ womb where we were also enveloped by mucous waters, like the amniotic fluid. It refuses contact with the anything, and nothing wants to touch it either. The shape of such a mucous liquid is a protective layer sheltering the intrinsic identity and desires of man. It is also a substitution that satisfies the ego’s instincts otherwise suppressed by social norms. The dolls’ eyes...

Acrylic paint on canvas Signed on the back Zahra ZEINALI was born in 1975 in Tehran, Iran. From 2001 to 2004, she studied Fine arts at the Art and Architecture University in Tehran. At the same time, she taught visual arts to children during 15 years. Passionate about photography, she trained in photography in 2007 at the House of Photography in Tehran. In 2012, she moved to France. Confronted with her new life, her vision of the world changed. Since 2020, she has resumed training in photography at the EFET School in Paris. Zahra ZEINALI The Doll’s House “What can a true artistic temperament aspire to after a youth spent in Iran today? To flee the hassles, prejudices, restrictions, to open wide a window of freedom rich in potentialities that were believed for a long time inaccessible. Zahra Zeinali became a visual arts teacher for fifteen years. Her pupils are 6 to 12 years old. Drawing, sculpture, painting, model design, she taught them a great diversity of techniques, but above all to think and design freely by themselves, in an atmosphere of joyful creative disorder which, surprisingly, is tolerated by a careful hierarchy. Then she studied four years at the University of Art and Architecture in Tehran. When she arrived in France, after a brief abstract period inspired by the rhythms of nature, it was at the time of the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks, which marked her deeply, to the point of lastingly darkening the ideal of emancipation and autonomy that she had projected on her stay in Paris. "There is no paradise on earth" she concluded with a melancholy smile. An old doll, bought for 1 euro in a storage room, triggers a click in her. The bitter imprint left by the Iranian confinement, the memory of her fifteen years of teaching visual arts to children, the loneliness of her Parisian exile, all this sentimental nebula found a plastic metaphor in the image of the doll. This is what these delicate earthenware faces evoke, often abused, abandoned, the childish innocence of their ingenuous gazes, a sort of strange absence from the world of the living, as if their attenuated life took place behind the mystery of a theater curtain...

Acrylic paint on canvas Signed on the back

Acrylic paint on canvas Signed on the back

Acrylic paint on canvas Signed on the back