Galerie DYS

Eldorado is an exhibition that will bring together the drawings of Annabelle Guetatra and the ceramics and sculptures of Etienne Pottier. The idea behind this title is that of an apparent paradise whose exploration gradually reveals the threats and leads - perhaps - to disillusionment. In addition to being a place that carries the hopes and desires of the naive discoverer, Eldorado also evokes a lush place with flora and fauna that are as extravagant as they are unusual. This game of deceptive appearances, the shadowy side behind the beauty and the multiplicity of readings that can be made of a work, are themes that I like to develop at the gallery.

In Annabelle Guetatra's drawings, the vaporous backgrounds worked with dry pastel are conducive to hiding and revealing strange details, secondary stories that disturb the narrative of the bodies that occupy the foreground. Her universe is at the same time impertinent and dreamlike, sensual and strange, sensitive and powerful, graceful and ferocious. This series of recent works mischievously explores the desire that intrudes, crawls and animates the bodies, despite the night, in a powerful game of chiaroscuro. Some of the drawings also become sculpture as they are mounted on a hinge system like an altarpiece, revealing or hiding according to the desire of the viewer.

Etienne Pottier creates ceramics with virtuoso enamels with compositions of intertwined animals, reptiles in full struggle, an open dog's mouth or a parrot struggling with a crocodile. We will also show mixed media sculptures. The composition is very rich, the talent is demonstrative, the mastery obvious. But a closer look reveals a violence, a raw and decadent side, humor, too, in this excess, like Bernard Palissy on steroids.