Polad-Hardouin gallery launches its 2016-2017 season with an exhibition of Caroline Demangel’s recent works. For her second personal exhibition at the gallery, the artist will present an ensemble of large- and small-format drawings that radiate the suppressed energy of a volcano. Omnipresent movements leave their mark on the paper through an interplay of concentric circles that give rise to overlapping and interwoven words and figures.

Personal events, the resurgence of childhood memories as well as current events constitute her favourite sources of inspiration for this exhibition. But of course, the spotlight is on body dynamics, their tensions and contradictions. Simply outlined, the body becomes a membrane that reveals the bubbling and protean energy that runs through it. It would take almost nothing for this strong and fragile envelope to tip over, shatter and spill it all out. 

If her style presents some affinities with CoBrA painters, it is also occasionally reminiscent of Michel Macréau. The words and drawings that run through Demangel’s works are of the same substance, of the same line, and tell what the body struggles to express. Drawing and writing merge into one another in a play of diffraction. Together, they unfold inner stories that can no longer stay silent. These uncanny and / or childhood stories are told in the form of nursery rhymes, in a somewhat playful quest for lightness.

The self-taught artist discovered drawing as one of those sudden and evident encounters. “I couldn’t wait to isolate myself to produce those visions that I couldn’t even imagine one second before. {...} I am still exploring this work of unfolding, of hatching something that is buried”.

Marked by juxtapositions, loops, errata, stamping, areas of flat lurid colours, the paper becomes Demangel’s field of exploration where she combines at leisure different techniques (oil and dry pastel, pencil, watercolours, acrylic paint,…) in order to achieve a clash of materials and lights: the shine of a collage is tempered by the mat velvety texture of spray paint, then contradicted by the bluntness of acrylic squeezed from the tube or spread with the fingers.

Born in 1977, Caroline Demangel had her first exhibition at the galleries Christophe Gaillard (Paris) and Chartier (Lyon). Represented by Polad-Hardouin gallery since 2012, she has taken part in numerous exhibitions and international fairs. Her work was noticed at the Outsider Art Fair in New York and was included in several important American art brut collections.