Looking at Idir Davaine’s new paintings may be like absorbing the essence of nature. The young artist, born in Paris in 1990, creates color schemes inspired by his own observations and musings. From June 4th to 26th, Davaine presents his first solo exhibition in Paris with Ketabi Projects, a nomadic gallery founded in 2020 by Charlotte Ketabi-Lebard.
A former collaborator at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Ketabi-Lebard decided to put a new kind of a gallery on the map – one that wouldn’t suffer the financial burden of renting a space in a big city like Paris and still allow her to promote emerging French and international talents at her own pace. Back in January, the gallery presented its inaugural exhibition by inviting Inès Longevial to show her new body of work at the Grandes Serres de Pantin. This June, Idir Davaine unveils Sous le Saule, a series of paintings inspired by the colors of spring that were completed over the past few months.
The exhibition is presented as part of Paris Gallery Weekend (June 3 to 6) at 22 Visconti, the independent art space located in Paris’ 6th arrondissement. Sous le Saule showcases Idir Davaine’s particular approach to painting – his medium of choice – ultimately a reflection on the act of painting itself: His work is all about the gesture and the “weight of the hand”, as he explains. With hints to Expressionism and painters like Gustav Klimt or Günther Förg, Idir uses color generously as a way to convey emotions that meet, merge or clash on the canvas. Quite often, the viewer is transported into the painting as its main consciousness, just like in Sous le Saule (2021), which depicts the subjective vision of leaves falling in front of your eyes when sitting under a willow tree…
