FROM THE FLOATING WORLD

baudoin lebon is pleased to present the first solo show of Vicky Colombet: "From the Floating World" at its Paris gallery (April 22-June 20, 2020) in conjunction with her exhibition, dialogue with Monet at the Musée Marmottan-Monet for the 3rd opus of "The Unexpected Dialogues" (April 28-October 25, 2020).

During the second half of 19th century, the West succumbed to the charm and aesthetics of Japanese art, and more particularly the Ukiyo-e or "Pictures of the Floating World", which inspired the Impressionists in terms of content, style, and approach. An avid collector of these etchings, Claude Monet shared with Japanese art the same appeal for subjects related to nature and its impermanence. In 1896-1897, Monet painted eighteen "Arm of the Seine, Near Giverny", from a boat that he had converted into a floating studio. He rose at dawn in order to paint the changing effects of light as the sun came up.

Focusing on the ephemeral quality of what we see, movement, light variations, changing reflections on the surface of water, the vanishing character of what you?re looking at, Vicky Colombet has done a series of abstract paintings in the same size, as "The Arm of the Seine, Near Giverny". At baudoin lebon, she will also present larger paintings evoking the great themes explored by the leading Impressionist, plus works on paper and a series of photographs titled "Light into Night". Vicky Colombet takes us from atmospheric landscapes to timeless fields of contemplation.

Vicky Colombet, a French American artist, lives and works between New York, Paris and the Hudson Valley. Over the last three decades, she has been developing a multidisciplinary body of work combining painting, drawing, photography and large-scale glass etching.

Inspired by Eastern philosophy, physics, the writings of Schopenhauer and the Sublime, and of Emerson and Thoreau about nature, Colombet shares a meditative and oneiric look on the world that shifts our perception between microcosm and macrocosm. Her use of pure pigments gives a unique vibration and emotional resonance. "My paintings are non-objective", Colombet says, "but they come from a place where abstraction and nature meet. Not only inspired by nature in the end-result, but also in every step of the process". The idea is to render a lived, then interiorized, experience that slips away from subject matter.