Hatchikian Gallery continues its series of exhibitions at Quai 36 within the Fiminco Foundation, with the same contagious enthusiasm to highlight talents to be discovered through original sets, drawn from the affinities of personalities who above all enjoy working together and sharing their artistic emotions.
After presenting solo shows over a long period of time: Carte Blanche with Yann L’Outsider in three tempos, Art Habité with Zepha in two parts, Hatchikian Gallery wanted to highlight the resonances between the approaches and works of artists from graffiti who have gradually asserted the uniqueness of their pictorial discourse in the studio. Thus, the year 2023 began with the group show Projections, which brought together Nelio, Chazme, and Zabala, three international artists who question our way of inhabiting a world in search of meaning through their in-situ mural and canvas works. These three remarkable colorists have taken us into their unique chromatic and formal universes, opening our eyes to the lines and horizons of our environments. The scenography imagined by Audrey Hatchikian allowed us to appreciate the obvious or more imperceptible echoes between works that explore the architecture of our world-setting, its geometries, its poetry, its dreamlike dimension, its organic forms, its shades of color, and its materiality juxtaposed with its naturalness. This is a way of expanding our perspectives to dimensions never before seen by art alone.
The show duo Jumpin’Colors: The Awakening of Color by David Bruce and Simon Poter.
This spring will be marked by a revival of color, which we desperately need to pull ourselves out of the daily grind. Audrey Hatchikian, in her role as curator, has been dedicated to bringing a burst of pictoriality and resolute optimism back into our eyes through the duo show titled Jumpin’Colors, featuring the artists David Bruce and Simon Poter. Jumpin’Colors: because these two creators are engaged in a true game around vibrant color fields that give incredible vitality to the figures and forms assembled on the canvas. While color is at the center of their work, their canvases defy one another in a kind of acid graphic duel between the stylized figures of David Bruce and the geometric forms arranged by Simon Poter. These two artists propose an aesthetic approach that does not claim to make art a vehicle for tortuous introspections or conceptual messages. Art is for them the source of an immediate surge that invites us to see life in pulsations of joyful colors.
David Bruce: the colors and pop figures of a joyful artistic momentum.
David Bruce composes parodies of still lifes – which should, on the contrary, be described as living – in a pop style, to give objects a surge of warm vitality. On canvas, he mixes oversized bananas, disproportionately large oranges, generational smiley faces, logos that represent an urban culture, basketballs that he loves, having spent his adolescence playing this sport on the suburban courts; he adds drops of rain that are never sad, references to vintage American TV series from the 90s or even sharks from the sea. These are whimsical compositions where forms, figures and motifs appear as gimmicks in a polychromatic visual language, summoned through effects of perspective that create paradoxical perspectives and illusions of depth of field. The artist uses a limited palette of bright and vivid colors, which he also applies to ceramics. His fascination with curved lines in naive forms naturally led him to the volume of ceramics. He creates vases and containers with unconventional and humorous morphologies, then customizes them with his signature iconic figures. A true dialogue now emerges between the canvas and ceramics, with echoes and references between the two media. The exhibition Jumpin’Colors will be an opportunity to discover canvases in different emblematic formats emblematic of his universe, which have been updated for this new production to include new elements from popular culture. David Bruce will also present unique ceramics that highlight his colorful assemblages.
David Bruce, the de-complicating art focused on the playful dimension.
David Bruce claims a de-complicating art, a creative audacity that ignores the judgmental judgments of avant-garde snobs. He never loses sight of the dimension of pleasure and amusement in his aesthetic approach, whether it be his own jubilation in creating or the solar vibrations transmitted to curious spectators of his work. This former basketball player paints and grapples as he plays, with the fury of almost choreographed gestural action. Although he began his career by practicing graffiti on trains, he now only re-enacts challenges among friends, to perpetuate the rebellious spirit of the graphic conquests that may have stimulated his visual expression in adolescence.
David Bruce now lives in Liège, where he has set up his studio, after spending a few years in the vibrant artistic Berlin of the post-fall of the Berlin Wall. Liège is a city that has been imbued with an artistic fervour but that still retains the authenticity of encounters that have not been distorted by fame. A city from which David Bruce can travel throughout Europe, as a devotee of inspiring artistic nomadism. For several years now, David Bruce has been exhibiting regularly internationally: New York, Paris, Zurich, Hamburg, Miami, Brussels have welcomed his mischievous and acid-tongued canvases.
The artistic collaboration between David Bruce and Nike.
In 2022, the artist was surprised to receive an unexpected proposal from Nike – who had spotted his work on social media – for a collaboration: the request involved creating a capsule of three T-shirts. David Bruce has always enjoyed playing with swooshs that are traced back to his own visual identity; he had carte blanche to imagine, during a project completed in eight weeks, T-shirts that are now collectors’ items and are worn worldwide by both unknown people and huge stars alike.
David Bruce joined the artists’ pool at Quai 36 for a live performance during the last edition of Urban Week Paris Défense during which he created an emblematic mural of his whimsical compositions. He is now joining Hatchikian Gallery for the duo show Jumpin’Colors, which will pit him amicably, in a match of colors, against the Lyon-based artist Simon Poter.
A match of colors between stylized figures and geometric shapes.
The two artists David Bruce and Simon Poter base their artistic approaches on a limited range of signature acid-colored patterns. But while this vibrant polychromy forms the stylized figures of a popular everyday life in David Bruce’s work, it also assembles in a singular arithmetic of abstract geometric forms in Simon Poter’s work. Creative graphic designer and graffitter of abandoned spaces, Simon Poter has turned to working in the studio, where he imagines canvases that can be said to belong to the lineage of geometric abstraction and concrete art. The artist explores the dynamic power of pigments in combinations where flat forms are strained by a singular relationship between pure lines and bold colors.
Simon Poter, a vibrant geometric abstraction of colors.
Regularly sought out for collaborations, urban murals and participation in Street Art festivals, Simon Poter works both on walls and on canvas, where he presents his fragmented plans punctuated by a rhythmic interplay of shapes and colors, like patterns of prints, with a predilection for yellows, roses, turquoise and blues. His arrangements draw on a repertoire of forms and a range of vibrant colors that stand in stark contrast to the grittiness of our everyday urban environments.
Simon Poter’s work weaves with the Bauhaus, Kandinsky, Vasarely, Matisse and even Poliakoff, evident artistic affinities that give his approach an extremely contemporary and timeless character, which can be, at a later stage, through the viewer’s gaze, compared to artistic movements originating in the 1920s and having developed into various currents throughout the 20th century. Simon Poter approaches the show Jumpin’Colors with a particular energy, an excitement to juxtapose his works with those of David Bruce for a Parisian exhibition that offers him a joyful meeting marking the year of his 40th birthday. He will present emblematic works from his approach, but also detours into more unconventional pictorial explorations: monochromatic compositions in shades of white, an exploration into the figurative with the representation of a stylized «Poter City» between architectural features and multicolored urban elements – a city in which one would like to live. He will also present two handmade tapestries that reprise his patterns in the manner of a print, where one will find his signature of shapes and colors: an exuberant intensity of abstract motifs.
Simon Poter had the opportunity to participate in a project called Quai 36, an immersive experience with the team from the Art Production House that turned out to be particularly stimulating. He created a mural as part of the architectural project Entract’ for the construction of the Artchipel residence in Garenne-Colombes. It is a monumental mural that he designed as a vibrant jazz rhythm with colorful pulsations. It is with great pleasure that he reunites with the Quai 36 team and also joins Hatchikian Gallery to present his work in the workshop during this exhibition Jumpin’Colors.
Jumpin'Colors, an exhibition by Audrey Hatchikian at Espace Quai 36.
Audrey Hatchikian, curator of this new exhibition, has imagined a scenography that highlights the intensity of the splashes of color on a playground where figures and forms play tricks on each other and capture our attention to fill them with a joyful, solar energy, inviting us to celebrate the spring of art. You can find this show featuring the duo Hatchikian Gallery at Quai 36 within the Fiminco Foundation in Romainville, a new cultural hub in the east of Paris. Jumpin’Colors will take place from April 6 to June 30 with an opening on April 5 at 6pm, with the artists performing, and a meet-and-greet session with the public: an opportunity to gather for a vibrant evening with a welcome cocktail and DJ set.
