Dans un pli du temps

A mediumistic artist, Raphael Lonné only started to draw in 1950, during a spiritualism session. Discovered by Jean Dubuffet a decade later, he is now considered a classic of this particular category of art brut: spiritual artists. Raphael Lonné has experimented with various techniques, from graphite to ink to watercolor. He mainly draws small formats on paper. Present in many collections, such as those of the American Folk Art Museum (USA) or the LaM (France), and Centro de Arte Oliva (Portugal) he was part of the traveling exhibition Inner Worlds Outside in 2006, alongside Miro, Kandinsky, and Picabia.

Discovered in the early 1980s at a homeless center in New York City, Melvin Way is now a key figure in contemporary art brut. Having interrupted his scientific studies because of his schizophrenia, he relentlessly covers fragments of papers of mathematical and chemical formulas, sibylline sketches… These dense talismanic notes, which he treasures in his pockets, exhale a rare magnetism. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Critics, Jerry Saltz, considers him “a mystic visionary genius, one of the greatest living American artists.” The artist’s works are now in the collections of the MoMA (New York) and the Smithsonian (Washington).

A former U.S. Air Force technician, chronically depressed and antisocial, it is only when he reached his thirties that he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. His syndrome is characterized by an eidetic memory that allows him to insert in his works a lot of data, especially encrypted, relating to his favorite subjects. Time, magic squares, the Titanic, and fictional megalopolises are among the recurring themes of his drawings. Present, among others, in the collections of the Smithsonian (Washington), his art has been shown at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, in the cult exhibition Le Bord des Mondes or in Alternative Guide to the Universe at the Hayward Gallery in London. In 2024, he was exhibited at Lafayette Anticipations (Paris).

Illiterate, Matsumoto is fascinated by writing. On calendar pages, brochures, questionnaires or forms, which he collects, he tirelessly copies literary texts, TV programs or notes of his own. Gathered and packaged in sealed envelopes, some of these writings are part of a fictitious epistolary collection. Presented for the first time in 2003 at the Collection of Art Brut (Lausanne), he was exhibited in 2015 at the Maison rouge (Paris) and in 2020 in Scrivere Designando : quand la langue cherche son autre, by curators Andréa Bellini and Sarah Lombardi, at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. A significant number of his works was donated to the Centre Pompidou in 2021.