Artists at Villarlong
Art collectors for many years, the owners have called on their favourite artists in France and Germany to bring together a collection of works inspired by light, colour, nature, texture and sometimes illusion. The common thread running through this exhibition is the strong personality of each artist, with developed and defined styles, years spent nurturing their art and seeing the world from a different and often challenging perspective.
The works are on display in the château’s various flats & are available for purchase.
Alejandro Rodriguez Sardiñas
is an artist with a diploma from the academy of fine art o San Alejandro (1992) who offeres us his own unique treatment of imaginery landscapes.
Cuba an Guyana, where he lived for serveral years, form his principal inspiration making for works of very great force. Nature is omni-present in his luxuriant imaginary landscapes. His canvases surprise us by their depth and perspective, combining vivid colour contrasts and a very personal technique, that in the end creates the illusion that these are landscape photographs.
His collages underline the encroachment of the modern world into nature which is gradually reclaiming its rights. Rather than describe the paintings, it may be better to stress the emotions that gave birth to them… “We are as a bird discovering the terrain from the sky”
Ana Cid
Ana is a multidisciplinar artist with a vast experience in engraving techniques such as etching, aquatint, drypoint, carborundum and fondinos.Born in Madrid in 1970, Ana begins her artistic training at the University of Bellas Artes in Madrid.
She completes a two years training at “The School of Visual Arts” in New York and graduates at the Universitat de Belles Arts of Barcelona, where she currently lives and where she continues her artistic work at The Reial Cercle Artistic de Barcelona.
After attending a Scientific Conference from the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park about proteins transportation inside the cells, she became fascinated with the idea of re-interpreting biological images as art.
In collaboration with the EC project 4DCellFate, Ana was exploring the world of stem cells—some of which were shown at an International Symposium along with her previous work on golgi complexes, Goblet cells, mitochondrias, viruses and neurons.
Her etchings have been exhibited and sold in various galleries in Spain, France and England. More etchings at: www.acid-factory.com In many of Ana ́s paintings there is a search of perspective.
Perspective as an internal process of reinterprating and reconsidering reality opposed to the unprocessed men of yesteryear?
Bettina Zapp
For Bettina Zapp (born in Goppingen, Germany in 1960) her art is not simply a reflection of reality, but must stand for itself.
“In my paintings I transform the seeming reality and make an offer that opens the viewer`s mind.
The pictures of Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell appeal to me the most, especially their late works, where the colour is so fresh and direct on the canvas, as if it had been applied only yesterday. Liveliness, richness of colour and freedom of thought are important to me in painting. Not hard and fast formulas.”
Colour painters develop complex relationships because the colour is about interaction. Colour choices must achieve a balance that lets the image come to the fore. The more a painting is dependent on colour for its composition and content, the more emotional a work becomes. Painting with paint is sensual, physical and self-reflective.
In my opinion the artwork must give something back in return for the attention I give to it – not unlike a conversation with a friend. It is a dialogue.
Brigitte Yoshiko Pruchnow
Brigitte Yoshiko Pruchnow is a German-Japanese artist, who finds her inspiration in Western modern realism as well as in traditional Japanese ink painting or wood cuts. She lives and works in Munich, Germany.
She holds an MA in Japanology, philosophy and History of Art and a diploma of the Munich Film Academy. Her works are on display all over Europe, but also in the US, South Korea and Japan at art galleries and art fairs. The at first seemingly photorealistic impression of light on various surfaces dissolves upon close inspection into pure painterly structures.
She is particularly interested in the Trompe l’oeil phenomena, which exists aa a tradition since the Baroque period. Apart from the play with materiality there are also questions about how we perceive and constitute the world around us and how one can achieve by applying certain creative means the illusion of a realistic subject. Solely by reflection light becomes visible in our surroundings and at the same time the artist views the light depicted in her work as allegory of an inner radiance.
You can see in the choice of her perspectives and croppings the influence of her training as a filmmaker as well as in the decision to paint fleeting moments of movement
Lume
Lume (Ludivine Lapasset) Was born in Bandol, France, in 1979 and studied for 3 years at the Ecole supérieure des Beaux Arts de Toulon – DNAP. In 2001 she moved to Barcelona to finish her studies at the “Universitat de Belles Arts de Barcelona” until 2008, where she discovered her love for colour.
LUME aims to portray in her paintings the importance of colour in perceptions, behaviour and feelings. As a basis she allows chromatism a greater importance over form, in canvases born of the desire to transmit the fruit of an inner contemplation, without words or images: successive strata, silent witnesses voluntarily left in the breadth of the monochrome field.
To seek how to translate thought and emotion in the moment, to materialize a fragment of life, an emotion, by a form, a gesture, a colour (or even an association of colours) becomes something reassuring in our human will to exist. ” Painting, and more particularly colour, guides me in my desire to discover my emotions, my fears and my doubts; to know how to manage them, to cohabit with them for the time of a painting: it allows me to feel free”.
Nadia Schmidt
Nadia Schmidt born in Berlin in 1964. Has been living and working in France since 2003 and since 2006 in Claviers in the Var. She is an Autodidact with an artist mother (Inge Schmidt), Who has been Drawing since childhood.
She was the Co-founder of a theatre in Berlin, producing stage designs and installations with character. She is also a co-founder and artistic director of the multidisciplinary art project « Labyrinth » in Berlin, producing large-scale installations and performances. For some years now she has intensively engaged in painting and drawing, with her main source of inspiration being the surrounding nature. She has had solo and group shows in Germany, Belgium and France, as well as public purchases.
Nadia handles the artistic means to create from the play of light on twigs and branches, the crannied surface of trunks or the dense undergrowth of the forest floor an aesthetic event vibrating in vitality. With her artistic interpretation, the illusionistic presentation of nature create the background and allow room to deal with what is seen emotionally, which may extend to a surreal distortion.