drawing now 2014

A prominent figure in contemporary art brut, this Czech artist is fascinated by medical iconography. An expert in the mysteries of anatomy, he devotes himself – when not drawing – to all sorts of performances reminiscent of the actionists. By testing the limits of physical existence, he conjures up death and sublimates life in its most organic form. His extremely detailed works in Indian ink and acrylic entered the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne (Paris) in 2013, then in 2021 thanks to the Bruno Decharme donation, and were notably exhibited on several occasions at the Maison Rouge, in Japan and at the 2017 Venice Biennale.

When Beverly Baker sits at her worktable, the ritual is always the same: on the blank piece of paper, with a ballpoint pen, the artist begins to trace letters on which she will draw until the meaning is annihilated. Her work is reminiscent of that of Twombly, Serra or Tapiès. A member of the « Latitute Artist » workshop (Kentucky), Beverly Baker has been presented twice at the Maison rouge (Paris) in these exhibitions: Le Mur, artworks from the Antoine de Galbert collection and art brut, abcd/Bruno Decharme collection and won the Wynn Newhouse Award in 2017.

Yuichi Saito is fascinated by popular Japanese shows. At the workshop of Kobe Shu (Saitama), which he has been attending since 2002, he began graphic work around these television programs, methodically writing, in a broad gesture, the title of each of them. His drawings have since then reached a degree of visual abstraction of great intensity. More recently, he has undertaken work on the mo character of the hiragana alphabet: its repetitions reveal his emotional states. His work has been shown in the collections of the Museum of Everything, at MONA, in Tasmania, and during the closing exhibition of the maison rouge (France): L’envol ou Le rêve de voler.