Art comes from a wild and devastating joy. It is an infernal and secret practice, like the ones which lead us to the borders of the sacred and the erotic, lived by living artists, until losing body and soul, this "petite mort" dear to George Bataille. It is beyond the mirror that these worlds claim their "Dark side".

On the traces of Degas trembling in front of his models in his studio, Masson whirling among a population of women, Goya illuminated by the pain of being, Zoran Music haunted by his armies of shades... there are artists who dare to go down towards these obscure hells. They make light spout out from their depths.

Whereas our world privileges appearance, essence remains in the unvoiced. Often kept deep within the being, all the pain of living remains concealed - sealed - in this dark side where love, desire, death meet each other, in an inexpressible suffering. What does not appear to our unconscious, but remains hidden there, finds its expression on the surface of the canvas. It is the gift which the creators supported by “Idées d’artistes” offer us: they make visible what is hidden at the core of the being, and their gift frees us from silence.

Since 2001, idées d’artistes has set these principles : to live and share vital interior experiences with these exceptional artists. Following the flash of Stani Nitkowski’s brush, splendid tenebrous, these creatures let their firery temperament quiver, fed in the dark caves of their accepted hell : Jean Rustin, Christine Sefolosha, Lydie Arickx, Sabhan Adam, then Michel Nedjar and Mohror, joined by a new generation: Helene Duclos, Claude, Guy Oberson, Sophie Rocco...

Without worrying about senseless fashions, they dare to confront this magnificient challenge, without concession and offer it to be viewed with the calibre of authentic artists. Idées d’artistes exhibits their work alongside some of their collegues’s, Marc Perez, Shahda, Velickovic, Dan Barichasse, Louise Giamari, Lionel Guibout, Quadrio, Zor, Michel Katuchevski, Michel Madore... in the dazzling glare of their angels fight, in this night so close from the timeless half-light of our memory.

Molly Mine