salon du dessin contemporain 2011

Josef Hofer, who has been a resident of an Austrian institution for more than 30 years, does not speak. He draws. Tirelessly. In the metaphoric mirror that he uses and reaches out to us, people attempt to flee from the straitjacket of the frame with eroticized and untamed grace. His works - to which Michel Thévoz has devoted several essays - depict a founding duality between body and psyche. Present in numerous museum collections, he is also part of great private collections: A. de Galbert (France), A. Shaker (Switzerland) and even in the collection of A. Rainer (Austria), who considers him “one of the greatest of the brut contemporary artists.” A significant number of his works was donated to the Centre Pompidou collection in 2021 while the gallery became the owner of his estate in 2022.

In a reminiscent of his past financial difficulties, Raimundo Camilo, a modest Brazilian worker interned in a psychiatric hospital, began drawing imaginary banknotes. Made of makeshift materials, such as wrapping papers and prints from the administration, he offered them to hospital staff, especially women. The artist who claimed not to make art, but simply “his duty” is today in the museum collections of LaM (France), at the Museu Oscar Niemeyer (Brazil) where he was exhibited with Bispo do Rosario, and in the private collection of the artist Arnulf Rainer (Austria).

Having become, in a decade, one of the most recognized contemporary brut artists, this autistic native of California is sometimes compared to Cy Twombly: while the latter deconstructs language, the former builds it. Since 2010, the gallery has contributed to its international recognition by organizing several exhibitions and publishing the only monograph available to date, enriched with an essay by Richard Leemann. Present in countless public and private collections - including those of the MoMA and Pompidou –, Dan Miller’s work was also part of the official selection of the 2017 Venice Biennale.

After a decorative arts training, she met her double in 2005 and became “Pandora.” Pandora is like a carnal key, capable of opening the doors of time, but also the higher strata of consciousness. Her works, mostly in graphite on paper, bear witness to her temporal journeys and act in our eyes as vibratory fields. Her divinatory work - close to Zdenek Kosek in his cataclysmic perception - is already part of the collections of Antoine de Galbert (France), Amr Shaker (Switzerland), the Museum of Everything (Great Britain), and the Collection of Art Brut in Lausanne.

The force of Malcolm McKesson’s work – transgressive, liberated, born of an exalted urge – invites the subjugated viewer to contemplate an impression of the uncanny. The artist lays bare part of what is buried deep, guiding us to the heart of our own familiar terra incognita . Malcolm McKesson came to art by an unusual path. Born to a well-heeled New York family, he graduated from Harvard and worked for the family chemical company for twenty years before withdrawing from professional life in his forties. With the support of his wife, the poet Madeline Mason, he decided to devote himself to his art. He began covering sheets of paper with a ball-point pen, working on the shapes as if[…]