Wednesday, January 29 to Saturday, April 19, 2005
Opening on Tuesday, January 28 from 6:00 pm
“Every day, a watchword, a resolution to ward off evil.
Every day, when I woke up, I felt the same: my head covered in ashes, my eyes clogged with images, my heart full of rage. Everywhere, tears, mud puddles, sheets of blood, invading everything. I walked through the city, crossed the forest, climbed mountains and crossed many deserts, spanning rivers and oceans. Limbs heavy, hesitant, proliferating.
Everything overflows and mingles, the body grounded by too much weight and secretly dreaming of lightening: no more hair, no more teeth, no more flesh. Only the desire to fade away. I envied the feather, the bird, the leaf carried by the wind. I watched it fly around me, light and carefree. And I dreamed of a very old garden, almost destroyed by time. And I dreamt of a long brush to bring back to life on the canvas, which, like a magic tool, would erase the overflow, to breathe life back into the words and see again, what I could no longer make out amidst the barely sketched shapes, the crumbling colors, the scattered fragments. With determination: digging again and unearthing old images.
Repetition becomes breathing. Creation emerges from the same gesture. And behind appearances, another face, another garden will emerge, perhaps... with unknown shapes, never-before-seen hues, unknown sensations, a whole palette to be cleared and sounds to be discovered, one by one, like rose petals.
Then, carried away by a new desire, to paint on the perforated walls, to decipher the signs, to excavate the rubble to heal memories, to revive the memory of those who once were: a silhouette that disappears before I can catch it, a lizard running between the stones, a wild flower that resists. The brush caresses, explores, reveals.
In the midst of the remains, there are still laughs, as if engraved in stone on the pediment of a flickering present.
So, to paint on the water, to paint on the wind, to try to hold back nature as it cracks, to straighten man as he bends, to restore the origin before the floods, before the murder of Cain, before the betrayal of Babel. And sign his name, seal every dream and every breath, even if the letters blur.
Amid the ruins, between the stone porticoes, a garden stands, half-erased, ready to be reborn.”
Marie de Villepin
Born in 1986 in Washington, D.C. Marie de Villepin grew up in the United States and India. Raised in a diplomatic household, Marie had the chance to surround herself with a prominent circle of poets, musicians, filmmakers, and artists including Zao Wou-Ki or Roberto Matta who also were family friends. Art was a constant feature in her upbringing, and she began developing her drawing and musical skills at an early age throughout her frequent travels.
In 2005, Marie moved to New York and then to Los Angeles, where she developed various musical projects, before devoting herself entirely to art. Drawing and painting emerged and eventually became ubiquitous. Marie filled dozens of notebooks, which allowed her to fix moments and emotions as a chronicle of her life. In search to deepen links between colors, sounds, and rhythm, she took a decisive step to transcribe her inner world onto canvas. Painting what she sees, and where she lived, in a way perhaps to ward off exile, loneliness, and doubts, through an accumulation of brushstrokes. Gradually, her whole world started taking shape, complete with landscapes, imaginary creatures, machines of all kinds, and waking dreams. Her works trace through space and time, oscillating between figuration and abstraction.
Marie has participated in a number of group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, and Hong Kong. In 2019 she presented her first solo exhibition titled New Creatures, which marked her return to Paris. In March 2022 at Galerie Charraudeau she presented The Lost Weekend, a collection of works created in the United States and France. Marie was then selected as one of the twelve artists to receive Le Prix Antoine Marin. The prize is presented by Espace Julio Gonzalez in Paris, where each young artist is nominated by a renowned artist, Marie was nominated by Anselm Kiefer.
In 2023 for her first major solo exhibition in Asia, Marie de Villepin presented "Murmuration", an ode to the enchanting ballet of birds gathering in the sky. Between paintings and drawings, a sensory journey unveiled at the Villepin Art Gallery in Hong Kong. That show was followed by a solo exhibition, "Behind the Sun" at the Today Art Museum in Beijing. In 2024 her works were shown at the Collection Lambert in Avignon as well at the Zhi Museum in Chengdu China and at the Mariane Ibrahim gallery in Mexico city.
“Marie de Villepin's paintings embody an art of freedom. She lets herself be guided by the desire for the new; to take possession of what is already there in order to venture out to elsewhere; to throw off conventions, to cry out, and to up the stakes. The fulfillment of the form moves forward, sometimes only when the colors have apportioned everything that could be conquered, other times well before when, interspersed with blanks, lines and colors attain a fragile equilibrium of forces._” – Daniel Arlaud
