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LAURENT PERNOTWe are miserable, but love suddenly, saves usBut the sea takes
and gives memory,
and love fixes the eye diligently,
and poets establish
that which endures.~ Friedrich Hölderlin, “Remembrance” (c.1800-1804)Galerie Marguo is very pleased to present We are miserable, but love, suddenly, saves us, an exhibition of new multimedia paintings and text-based sculptures by Laurent Pernot, on view at the Paris gallery from 10 September to 8 October 2022.The Romantic poets sought to articulate the monumentality of nature and historical time through the subjectivities of the individual, experienced via minute impressions and emotions that shape the human condition and our experience of this world. Pernot’s work echoes the Romantic impulse to synthesize the ordinary and sublime through lyricism and metaphor.For nearly two decades, he has been developing a distinctive formal language, nourished by literature, poetry, and mythology that probes questions of eternity, ephemerality, and memorialization across a wide array of media. Particularly important to the artist are the influential roles of fragility and love in such matters. These motifs course through his practice, like veins through marble, which are in themselves mere traces, formed by crystallized minerals deposited by water that once ran through the stone and evaporated.Artist: Laurent Pernot -
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Installation View
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The Contemplations series
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The pictorial abstractions are meticulously composed of inlaid wood and sourced scraps of marble that brim with the subtle tension of contrasting temporalities and temperatures inherent to these ancient materials. The washes of pigment that tint the wood indicate the accretive character of memory, with each new experience or passing moment coloring the ones before it.
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The idea is not to make paintings. What interests me is really to assemble colors, textures, to mix forms together so as to compose images.
— Laurent Pernot
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Laurent Pernot
The Spring of My Feelings, 2022Acrylic, varnish handpainted on cut wood and marble on wood panel
186 x 140 cm (73 1/4 x 55 1/8 in)
4 parts, between 17.5kg and 22kg each part -
The depicted images are extracted from a wide range of art historical sources and techniques, from traditional Japanese stamps to Félix Vallotton, with varying degrees of legibility. On the whole, The Contemplations can be seen as units of an oneiric time, in which disparate geographies, eras, cultures and tempos have been suspended, or flattened into one plane, as though in a dream.
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Tsuchiya Koitsu, Maizuru Harbor at Night, 1936
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Ohara Koson, Five Egrets Descending in Snow, 1920
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Félix Vallotton, Coucher de soleil, 1913
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Memory is an important dimension in this series. First, there is this idea of fragmented elements that I am associating, intermingling to create a dialogue between different works and time periods in the history of art. In a way, this series is an essay on memory, a representation of what memory is as well as a work of memory.
— Laurent Pernot
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Laurent Pernot
The Bay Before Sunset, 2022Acrylic, varnish handpainted on cut wood and marble on wood panel
100 x 45 cm (39 3/8 x 17 3/4 in)
Weight: 13.5kg -
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Portrait of Laurent Pernot. Photo: Evgenia Smolianskaia
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