Daniel Flammer - Les Chants captifs

From 03 to 21 September 2013

Space 2 - Opening on April 25 starting 6pm

Polad-Hardouin gallery is pleased to present for the first time in its space 2, dedicated to the discovery of emerging artists, a number of recent paintings and one large-format drawing by Daniel Flammer.

“Daniel Flammer’s paintings are mental landscapes. A mix of anxiety and incongruity in which the kingdoms of nature are combined into bizarre hybrid creatures, they are evocative of dreams, sometimes of nightmares”, writes journalist Nadine Vasseur. His Captive Chants take us back to the painter’s visions, incarnated in the bright and sharp colours of his canvasses, but also to the chants of anonymous, forgotten people.

Daniel Flammer takes us inside a fabulous universe where mermaids are chatting on top of branches against a multicoloured sky, where a strange couple is collecting blood from a tree with snake-like roots. This pictorially omnivorous artist is imbued with Flemish art, in particular the art of Brueghel the Elder. He refined his style by paying careful attention to the specific treatment of landscapes and detailed village scenes, as testified by his paintings Le Fils du Boucher (“The Butcher’s son”) or Le Partage (“The Sharing”).

But Daniel Flammer’s curiosity is not limited to the world of art; insatiable and outward-looking, he is interested in street life, craftsmen, small trades and beggars. We find them in his paintings which, on closer examination, are more realistic than they may seem at first glance. In the manner of Goya’s Caprichos, his allegorical paintings bear witness to their time. Far from confining themselves to symbolic discourse, they play with multiple meanings, thus preserving their mystery and flavour.

In his drawings, dominated by the urban dimension and fairground landscapes, the titles Parlementaires (“Parliamentarians”), Compromis Diplomatique (“Diplomatic Compromise”), and La Chute des nations (“The Fall of Nations”) suggest a more political reading. A preview of his black-stone drawings will be presented at the Drawing Now/Paris salon from April 11 to 14.

Daniel Flammer was born in 1984 in Charenton-le-Pont. He graduated from ENSBA (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts) in Paris. From 2004 to 2009, he attended various workshops by Dominique Gauthier, Philippe Cognée, James Rielly and, in 2008, a workshop by Valérie Favre in the framework of an exchange with the Universität der Künste in Berlin. In 2010, in Paris, he takes part in the exhibition of ENSBA students who graduated with distinction, and, in 2011, he is selected for the 15th edition of the Antoine Marin prize. This is his first personal exhibition at the Polad-Hardouin gallery.