The exhibition Figures Seules, presented at Lee Ufan's Espace MA in Arles from July 1 to September 24, 2023, brings together works by five artists working in France - Brigitte Aubignac, Ymane Chabi-Gara, Marc Desgrandchamps, Tim Eitel and Djamel Tatah - on the theme of the human figure.

The human figure is presented alone, not for formal reasons, but because this solitude refers to situations with social and psychological meanings that are particularly characteristic of our times: self-enclosure, the absence of the other, melancholy, exclusion or mourning.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Éditions Martin de Halleux, with texts by Philippe Dagen and Lee Ufan.

This exhibition is supported by Guerlain, which is accompanying Lee Ufan Arles in a more global collaboration over the next two years.

Price: the price of an admission ticket to Lee Ufan Arles includes access to the permanent and temporary exhibitions.

Brigitte Aubignac, painter and film-maker, questions the stereotypes of women in art history. Based on intimate and unspeakable scenes, she explores the taboos of contemporary society and the social issues surrounding madness and mourning.

pacea.fr | galerie@pacea.fr

Isolation, solitude, the body in relation to the world and the condition of social being are the central subjects of Ymane Chabi-Gara's paintings. They depict individuals, alone or in small groups, in worlds and situations that mirror their inner selves. Domestic spaces and industrial wastelands support the narrative, guided by formal and colorful impressions. Ymane Chabi-Gara determines the structure of the composition through meticulously detailed drawing. From these frames, the experience of painting for its own sake opens up sensitive possibilities. The body serves as the point of convergence towards which all experience tends and finds meaning. The bodies of others, but also, more recently, her own body. This staging of herself addresses both the singularity of intimacy and solitude as an archaic, universal feeling.

mennour.com | galerie@mennour.com

A major painter on the French art scene, Marc Desgrandchamps plays with notions of opacity, transparency and superimposition. Although his painting is figurative, perspective is often distorted, space undefined and anomalies emerge: fragmented bodies, ghostly objects. His works, drawing their references from many worlds (art history, photography, cinema, literature, music, as well as personal photos), test the limits of figuration. In his own words, he cultivates "a painting of doubt, doubt of the figure, doubt of presence, doubt of painting itself". This doubt is expressed through transparency, which is also a way of speaking of time and passage. Another recurring motif in his work is the female figure, particularly bathers, which occupies a central place. There are strong constants in his paintings, such as certain sites or the omnipresence of the blue sky.

galerie-lelong.com | info@galerie-lelong.com
eigen-art .com | leipzig@eigen-art.com | berlin@eigen-art.com

For almost twenty years, Tim Eitel has been using painting to create analogies with reality, building fictional parallel worlds out of situations that have been seen and experienced. His paintings are based on encounters, photographed objects or spaces that actually exist. The protagonists encountered are also often acquaintances or close friends of the artist. The experiences thus produced are then reduced to a meaningful essence. From his earliest works, his work is imbued with an ambivalence between pure color as a large-area abstract form - in the same way that a black wall delineates the contours of an image - and color as motif, atmosphere and feeling. Tim Eitel's works do not tell stories, but present a moment without beginning or end, defined both by a constellation of figures in space, the fading of light on architectures and the relationships of colors to each other.

eigen-art.com | leipzig@eigen-art.com | berlin@eigen-art.com
pacegallery.com
jousse-entreprise.com

In his sober, uncluttered paintings, Djamel Tatah depicts contemporary man asserting his presence in the world. Drawing on reality, from the most ordinary situations to current events, he paints human figures on the scale of the body, suspended in time, immersed in silence and seemingly belonging to no defined place. Reassessing solitude as a virtue, the artist attempts to go beyond reality to experiment, through color, light and line, with his sense of being in the world.

galeriepoggi.com | office@galeriepoggi.com