Christophe Avella-Bagur

Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard present ‘‘Premium’’ an exhibition of new paintings by Christophe Avella-Bagur from the 6th to 27th September 2008. In a primordial space of white light, Avella-Bagur offers us archetypal models of masculine and feminine bodies, or those of robots or computer-animated bodies in video games. A second image of face full of life and colour is projected onto the identity-less mannequins, distinguishing one from the other. No two faces are the same, and within each painting the artist finds new ways to juxtapose the portrait of the mannequin and that of the individual face cast upon it. The artist first paints a smooth and ‘clean’ painting, conforming to the standard model of manufacture. He then paints the second faces, which are distressingly and grotesquely deformed like those of Titian or of Goya.