In their joint exhibition «Nocturnes», Katia Bourdarel (*1970, lives and works in Marseille and Paris) and Sylvain Ciavaldini (*1970, lives and works in Marseille) each show recent works of nocturnal scenes in nature, of apparitions of light in the dark, and of mythical, fairytale-like themes that also make up our dreams.

In the true sense of the word, they are «night pieces, moments in moonlight or other natural as well as artificial light sources. It is not always possible to say exactly, the play with naturalness and artificiality seems intentional and is as much in the nature of the subjects as in the nature of art itself. Ambiguous stories also entwine themselves around the pictures. In «L’éternité d’un instant», for example, Katia Bourdarel shows the eternity of a moment as a multiple portrait of a young woman in thought. Like a film sequence in slow motion, the portraits overlap behind the dark foliage and may even make us think for a little eternity. As in her earlier works, Katia Bourdarel draws on commonly familiar images of figures and bodies, on familiar poses and gestures, sometimes from popular culture and collective image memory. However, this surface is permanently disturbed by breaks and oblique pictorial elements. The supposedly «beautiful» and «good» are brought close to the «evil» and «dark»; the melancholic and morbid close to the cheerful and lively. On the shrub in «Mémento mori», for example, one can make out green leaves as well as withered ones. Her images of women, sometimes resting, sometimes wandering, in the forest interior are also ambiguous, their contours partially blurred in the semi-darkness and in the movement. They could just as easily come from a mythical legend as from a mystically enigmatic fairy tale. The motif and the title «Songe d’une nuit d’été» (Dream of a Summer Night) also echo Shakespeare’s comedy «A Midsummer Night’s Dream» as well as the errors and confusions of the protagonists, which they experience in an enchanted forest.

Sylvain Ciavaldini’s still lifes, landscapes and treetops, on the other hand, are literally modelled by light and shadow in black and white; but they are also «haunted» or covered by strange traces of light as well as luminous stripes and dots. Ciavaldini’s interest in the representation and artistic shaping of light and other natural phenomena is manifested here on several occasions. The glistening light, the stripes, traces and dots on «Canopée» (leaf canopy/tree canopy) or «Dans le noir #1-#5» also have their own form or «un-form». Finally, they become a blank space in the picture, a place for looking through and back, for reflection.

In addition to painting and drawing, Katia Bourdarel and Sylvain Ciavaldini both work with object, installation and video art. In Marseille, the artist couple also share a studio.

Marc Munter, 2023