50 young painters to follow in particular

About the young French scene to be seen in the exhibition "Immortelle" held in Montpellier until 4 June at Mo.Co and until 7 May at Mo.Co. Panacée, as well as in the exhibition "Voir en peinture, la jeune figuration en France" at the Musée de l'Abbaye Sainte-Croix in Les Sables-d'Olonne until May 28.

There must have been a lot of discussion at the editorial meeting of L'Oeil magazine when it came to preparing this month's dossier devoted to the "50 artists of the new French scene"! A few journalists must have been tearing their hair out to come up with this necessarily non-exhaustive selection of painters and cartoonists born in 1980 and working in France, and we understand them. Moreover, Fabien Simode warns from the outset, in his article prefacing the fifty lucky ones: "the ambition is great but, let's admit it from the outset, doomed to failure, as this scene is so plural and dynamic". There is no way to complain that "such and such an artist is missing", "that such and such an aesthetic or technical trend is not sufficiently represented or, on the contrary, that it is over-represented"... the small critical team of L'Oeil already knows this. And it's a fact. Because, whether it's a question of characters or an artistic scene, "portraiture - artists know this better than anyone - means making choices".

Amélie Adamo's choices were therefore made on :

• Arnaud Rochard, a transdisciplinary painter whose wild universe is inspired as much by Far Eastern art as by dark romanticism, comics, literature or cinema;
• Apolonia Sokol, represented by the art gallery The Pill in Istanbul, whose oil portraits are a political gesture;
• Laurent Proux, painter represented by the Semiose art gallery and exploring nature and industry, while claiming to be nourished by the paintings of ancient artists such as Poussin, Courbet, Böcklin, Hodler, or more contemporary ones such as Yves Bélorgey or Mathilda Marque Bouaret;
• Corentin Grossman, whose works of art for sale are at the Galerie art:concept and abound in realistic drawings in a surrealist universe;
• Julien des Monstiers, a multi-media painter with no boundaries, who has digested Velazquez as well as Sigmar Polke, represented by the Gaillard art gallery;
• Eva Nielsen, represented by Galerie Jousse Entreprise and whose practice is at the crossroads of painting, photography and silk-screen printing;
• Johanna Mirabel, painter and sculptor at the frontiers of realism, expressionism and abstraction, inspired by the lyrical creolisation of Edouard Glissant;
• Guillaume Bresson, represented by the Nathalie Obadia art gallery, whose work is underpinned by a violent social reality;
• Fabien Mérelle, a draughtsman and sculptor of meticulous realism, represented in Switzerland by the Wilde Gallery and in Paris by Lara Sedbon;
• Aurélie de Heinzelin, represented by Galerie Malebranche, for whom ambiguity is the most beautiful thing one can do in painting, and who claims to be spiritually born of Otto Dix and Paula Rego;
• Nazanin Pouyandeh, whose artworks are for sale at the Sator Gallery, bringing tenderness and celebration to the world's disasters with the strength of their palette and eroticism;
• Madeleine Roger-Lacan, represented by Frank Elbaz and living so intensely her relationship with the world that everything is intense in her painting, from the colours to the extravagance;
• Maël Nozahic, who draws on mythological and popular sources to paint, draw and engrave, and whose work is not yet represented by an art gallery;
• Romain Ventura, whose works of art for sale are represented by the Samira Cambie art gallery and who paints in oils based on photos taken with his telephone;
• Karine Rougier, represented by the art gallery Espace à vendre and who deploys her universe on various supports by perceiving love as a source of energy;
• Marion Bataillard, represented by Galerie Paris-B, who sees painting as a kind of incarnation and duplication at the same time;
• Mathilda Marque Bouaret, whose intranquil painting is not yet represented by an art gallery;
• Lucie Picandet, represented by Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois, developing a hybrid practice that mixes drawing and painting, watercolour and embroidery, image and word.

Anne-Cécile Sanchez's choices were :

• Achraf Touloub, co-founder of Galerie Parliament, who tries to make his artworks slip through the net of artificial intelligence by making them unidentifiable;
• Nathanaëlle Herbelin, following in the footsteps of the Nabis, represented by the Galerie Jousse Entreprise Art Contemporain;
• Mireille Blanc, clearly identified as one of the representatives of young figurative painting in France and represented by the Galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou;
• Farah Atassi, inspired by Matisse and Picasso to approach painting in a conceptual way, represented by the Almine Rech art gallery;
• Claire Chesnier, recently collaborating with the Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière, whose works of art for sale give off an atmospheric perception through ink and water mixed over time;
• Giulia Andreani, a painter who uses Payne's grey with such virtuosity that her paintings seem to be black and white photographs, represented by Galerie Max Hetzler;
• Julie Beaufils, represented by the Balice Hertling Art Gallery, stimulating the viewer's visual memory by bringing space into her paintings;
• Hugo Capron, represented by the Semiose Gallery and handling colour and stereotypes with joy;
• Mathilde Denize, operating a constant back and forth between painting and volume work, represented by the Galerie Perrotin;
• Diane Dal-Pra, represented by Galerie Derouillon, whose works of art for sale, strewn with textiles, pleats and other draperies, are currently exciting the contemporary art market;
• Cecilia Granara, represented by the ExoExo Gallery, a visual artist with an outlet for her work;
• Miryam Haddad, represented by the Art:Concept Gallery and much exhibited since 2019 with her maelstrom of colours;
• Xinyi Cheng, represented by the Balice Hertling Gallery, combining the delicacy of her contemporary artworks with the technique of the masters, from Georges de La Tour to Gerhard Richter;
• Yann Kebbi, a prolific and compulsive draughtsman represented by the Galerie Martel;
• Paul Mignard, alchemist and walker painter represented by the Galerie Poggi;
• Anne Bourse, represented by the Crèvecoeur Gallery, whose installations evoking domestic spaces create a heady and elusive work between Raoul Dufy, Irma Blank, Paul McCarthy or Mike Kelley;
• Pierre Seinturier, represented by the Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois art gallery with his mysterious landscapes;
• Xie Lei, a virtuoso painter with magical accents represented by the Semiose Gallery.

Finally, Anne-Charlotte Michaut has chosen :

• Raphaël-Bachir Osman, who has fun cooking all genres;
• Jimmy Beauquesne, whose fictional portraits of pop star Justin Bieber show that fiction and intimacy go hand in hand for a generation that is fed on pop culture and new technologies;
• Dhewadi Hadjab, represented by the Kamel Mennour gallery and representing the body in all its states;
• Neïla Czermak Ichti, represented by the Anne Barrault art gallery and who bears witness to the major cultural influences of her generation;
• Léa Belooussovitch, represented by Galerie Paris-B, whose drawing on textile felt is based on a press photograph;
• Mathieu Dufois, represented by Galerie C, who drew for a long time in the courts before entering the contemporary art scene;
• Ymane Chabi-Gara, represented by the Kamel Mennour art gallery, who gives a universal dimension to the confinement and solitude inherent in our world saturated with objects and images;
• Matthias Garcia, represented by the Sultana art gallery, deploying a phantasmagorical universe that is always ambivalent;
• Jean Claracq, also represented by the Sultana Gallery, who has rapidly established himself as an essential representative of the new French figurative painting;
• Carlotta Bailly-Borg, represented by Galerie Praz-Delavallade, who develops a ceramic practice in addition to her drawings and paintings, which are always disturbing;
• Nicolas Daubanes, represented by the Galerie Maubert, who exhibited at the last Lyon Biennial his reconstruction of a room in the Lyon military court where many death sentences were handed down during the Algerian war;
• Flora Moscovici, whose works of art, always out of frame, like so many pictorial interventions, are not yet represented by a gallery owner;
• Pol Taburet, represented by Balice Hertling, whose artworks for sale are based on Afro-Caribbean beliefs, voodoo rites, rap music and video games;
• Marcello Barcelo, represented by the Galerie Anne de Villepoix and not hesitating to add a touch of nail varnish to her works steeped in symbolism.