Magnificences

April 8 – May 8, 2023
Coline Casse et Camilla Doumé 
Galerie Ars Longa

Right in the heart of Aix’s gallery district, on Rue Jaubert to be exact, there’s one that catches the eye. Ars Longa, with its name borrowed from the Hippocratic formula that balances “long art” against “short life”, opened its door and wide iron window a little over three years ago. Dedicated to supporting emerging creation as well as more established practice, its program is composite, well-paced and, for the most part, home-grown.

For the past few days, two artists who graduated from Marseille’s Beaux-Arts school have been exhibiting here: Camilla Doumé, who turns her canvases into vividly painted textile supports, and Coline Casse, who illuminates her paintings with lighting techniques worthy of the great cinema. Assuming her slightly psychedelic rendering between the variegated style of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the use of pictorial thread to the more contemporary Ghada Amer, Camilla Doumé awakens the neo-expressionism of burning social issues with a more than explicit Abortion or Introspection; more intimate, but no less political, her Bad Mood or Androgyne. While staying away from truisms, she works on cultural motifs that would seem to be subterranean in our dominant context, as with her depiction of the Vodoun goddess Mami Wata, a powerful black woman, siren and reptilian. Her chimerical universe joins forces with the more figurative Coline Casse, already spotted in the area, notably at the late Buropolis.

Her subjects, alone on canvas in uncluttered settings, evolve in their wide framing with intense atmospheres, and refer to numerous artistic references. In short, a double combination whose compositions are well worth the experience.

Margaux Dewavrin (Journaliste Art/Magazine Ventilo)

VIEWING room