Virginie Barré

Artists: Virginie Barré,
together with a selection of works by artists from the Albers-Honegger Collection: Max Bill, Matti Braun, Marcelle Cahn, Sonia Delaunay, Tatiana Loguine, Ingeborg Lüscher, Aurélie Nemours, Meret Oppenheim, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Peter Wigglesworth...

An artist active since the mid-1990s, Virginie Barré develops a universe in which theatrical staging plays a central role. Her multidisciplinary practice combines drawing, sculpture, installation, as well as comics and film.
Her work explores themes of dreams, danger and the fragile boundary between reality and fiction. Informed by historical and artistic references, her approach is distinguished by a subtle irony, giving rise to suspended tragic scenes where death and the grotesque intertwine.
Her work involves a particularly agile and fertile reworking of forms and narratives, within an approach to abstraction that is both joyful and colourful, always open to new interpretations and temporalities.

Her practice therefore engages closely with cinema. Films such as Le rêve géométrique and  Nos corps sont des rivières (2022) offer an expanded vision of geometric abstraction, in a spirit of musical comedy that at times recalls Agnès Varda or Jacques Demy. One finds a highly colourful universe, traversed by geometric forms, ballets and costumes, in an aesthetic that also echoes the spirit of the Bauhaus, drawing on a simple formal vocabulary and primary colours. Setting forms in motion and activating them is thus a central principle of her work.

This principle continues in the exhibition Absolue de rose, presented in the château gallery, where the artist has conceived a project in resonance with the site, particularly responsive to Gilles Clément’s landscape design in the park.
The title Absolue de rose refers, in the vocabulary of perfumery, to the most concentrated essence, patiently extracted from the flower. In Mouans-Sartoux, the May rose was cultivated for its rare fragrance, from which the “absolute” was derived, a pure and dense extract. Seeds, flowers and vegetal forms have run through the artist’s practice for several years. She gathers, paints, collects and represents them, thereby preserving the memory of living matter, gesture and time.

Presented at the eac., Absolue de rose is rooted in the history of the site, between abstraction and sensory experience. She is currently developing new works in collaboration with artisans, centred on the creation of terracotta beads. This process, involving back-and-forth exchanges, gives rise to modules at the intersection of sculpture and installation, resonating with her research into costume, dance and performance.

New soft textile figures, in continuity with the mannequins of the 2000s, appear under the title Les sentinelles de la joie; flags bearing the colours and words of a musical comedy La plage des dames, currently being written; while oversized necklaces made of boxwood and porcelain beads unfold their rhythms and variations. Painted garments—both for studio work and for going to the beach—a magic wand and a number of talismans punctuate the ensemble. Watercolour drawings develop in dialogue with artists such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Charlotte Perriand and Valentine Schlegel.

Deeply inspired by the Albers-Honegger Collection, Virginie Barré wishes, for this exhibition, “in her own way of composing with living matter, colours and materials”, to intersperse her proposal with a selection of works from the collection, in order to initiate a dialogue. This selection fosters a fruitful exchange between her practice and the works in the collection, notably with women artists such as Meret Oppenheim, Aurélie Nemours, Sonia Delaunay and Marcelle Cahn, with particular attention to fields sometimes considered marginal, such as the decorative arts, illustration and applied arts.

Absolue de rose offers a blending of genres in which the domestic meets art, where everyday life is closely intertwined with artistic practice—particularly when one is an artist, a woman and a mother. The exhibition thus promises to be a vibrant and richly layered proposition, opening onto new perspectives.