A project initiated by Jessy Mansuy, Global Executive Director of Mennour
and curated by Christian Alandete, Scientific Director of Mennour
"The blue hour is that subtle, suspended, fleeting moment when day turns to night—an interval between light and dark that is neither dawn’s nor dusk’s, expanding like a breath, a territory where outlines blur and certainty gives way to intuition. It’s an in between state halfway from dream to reality, between violence and gentleness. A moment that calls for contemplation, for exploring ambiguity, for looking further than appearances, for finding a fertile source of creation in the fragile and the transitory."
This second edition of Mennour Emergence brings together six artists who have recently graduated from the École des Arts Décoratifs – PSL, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy. They have all been invited to produce original artworks, which are being exhibited here for the first time. Some of these new works are in continuity with those they produced for their diplomas, while others are already moving in new directions. Faced with today’s both ecological and more broadly societal issues, and the increasingly fragile balance of the world we inhabit, these artists call on us to deconstruct our ways of thinking and re-examine our convictions.
Ruoxi Jin was born in China and lives in France. Navigating between these two territories, she has invented a surrogate family that accompanies her (between reality and fiction) in her different lives.
Zoé Bernardi has found in her “divas” a community whose history is part of a long tradition, but which is in danger of disappearing as gender fluidity gets embodied in new ways. She has attempted to capture moments of playfulness and sharing, of self-acceptance and mutual recognition.
Matias Agafonovas’ abstract paintings are the result of a haphazard but subtly controlled encounter between lines and geometric shapes. These at times clumsy encounters lend vibrancy to a compositional arrangement enhanced by drawings on paper.
Amine Habki deconstructs the way in which masculinity is imposed in our societies, proposing new incarnations in compositions of embroidered wool, under the combined influence of the Italian Primitives and Arabic poetry.
Nicolas Lebeau’s photographic installations are situated at the limits of the visible and the identifiable. Repurposing images taken from social media, then printed on machines that have been tampered with, he encourages us through this gesture of possible rebellion to rethink our fascination with images and our blind belief in their authenticity.
Finally, Clémence Gbonon navigates between figuration and abstraction. Building upsuccessive layers of paint, she immerses us in uncertain spaces, where elements that we identify with bodily fragments or interior objects appear, without our knowing whether the image is dissolving into its surroundings or if it is instead revealing itself there.
