Like distant echoes blending in the distance
Into a deep and shadowy unity.

(Charles Baudelaire)

Hubert Barrère the creator, artistic director of Maison Lesage (Chanel Métiers d'Art) and visionary embroiderer, offers a personal and sensitive perspective on contemporary creation. At the crossroads of craftsmanship and visual arts, the exhibition celebrates the hand, the soul and inispiration.

Through a selection of works that weave intimate connections between artists, the exhibition pays homage to the emotion of the image, to the artistic blur as a revealer of beauty, and to the feminine figure, whether as silent muse or defiant rebel.

The real change comes from the way the younger generations look at creativity.

(Hubert Barrere)

In the spirit of Baudelaire’s Correspondances, the exhibition unfolds as a network of elective affinities, artistic friendships, and aesthetic infatuations. As in the poem where “scents, sounds and colors answer one another” (les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent), each artwork becomes a mirror, a thread, a whisper subtly echoing another.

One of the recurring themes is an ode to the feminine not as a single representation, but as a plurality of presences, symbols, and tensions. The reclycled metal flowers of Abdul Rahman Katanani emerge like fragile protests, both tender and fierce, echoing lives scarred by exile yet blooming defiantly. Their sulfurous beauty resists ornamentation, invoking Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, where the flower is never innocent.

The photographic works and choreographic imprints of Liu Bolin bring another layer: a dance between disappearance and emergence, where the body becomes landscape, memory, or message. His invisible women dissolve into the environment, yet speaks louder through absence, a statement on both societal and personal erasure.

In soft counterpoint, the pastel Countesses of Gaël Davrinche revisit classical portraiture with a deliberately dissonant twist. Their powdered elegance conceals an unsettling gaze, a knowing irony that plays with codes of beauty and power. These women, at once historical and invented, question our inherited ways of seeing the feminine figure.

Together, these works form an emotional tapestry woven with gestures, textures, and silences. They do not illustrate a concept but suggest a constellation of meanings, inviting viewers to reflect, remember, and feel across time and form.

Icons such as photographer Erwin Olaf, whose passing in 2023 left a profound impression on Hubert Barrère, meet a new generation of artists, including Rakajoo, Charles Hascoët, and Saype. Transmission becomes vibrant, not didactic, but tender and demanding.

The artworks converse like a visual fugue. The handcrafted gestures of Li Hongbo, the veiled portraits of the Miaz Brothers, and the totemic embroideries of Eko Nugroho respond to the light of photography, the texture of drawing, and the depth of painting.

In the spirit of Charles Baudelaire’s correspondences, the exhibition evokes elective affinities, artistic friendships, and aesthetic infatuations. Each piece becomes a mirror, a thread, a whisper.