Eugénie Paultre: Des liens plus que terrestres

Erna Hecey is delighted to host the first Eugénie Paultre solo exhibition at the gallery.

Eugénie Paultre was born in 1979 in Paris, where she currently lives and works. She studied then taught philosophy at the Sorbonne but since 2010 she has devoted herself to painting and writing. She said: "I studied philosophy for ten years to try to discover the truth of thought, the righteousness of spirit, but also, and more importantly, to try to understand why the Western world had lost its way and to discipline and reassure myself. But to no avail. The emotions were too strong. I could not hold them at bay, I had to work with them. […] And so at the age of 30, I entered into the service of colour."

Eugénie Paultre quickly moved away from figurative attributes and play on forms, and she reduced her compositions to the simplest possible expression: she applies colour in juxtaposed vertical bands (or "lines"). The possibilities are many: she can vary the width or successive cadences of the coloured bands, the materials (pigments, inks, oil, gouache, pastel, acrylics), the medium (mainly canvas and paper), and of course the full range of tones available and their combinations. Her work is however very far from any concept of systematic exploration, she lets herself be guided by her intuition: each painting is linked to a moment invested by the act of painting, here and now, the act of bringing out the colour in a pre-established, but not pre-existing, structure. The range of colour combinations is just as vast as the range of tones. She explores them with no preconceived rules and denies herself neither harmony nor discord. Painting, for Eugénie Paultre, is exploring "the fundamental colour dimension of existence".

The More Than Earthly Ties exhibition displays around 30 small paintings on paper from the total of 60 works completed in 2019. 

To accompagny the exhibition, Erna Hecey published a booklet that includes two texts by Eugénie Paultre in French and English, alongside colour reproductions. It is available for purchase, and consultation here.