Fabienne Verdier

Guided by Chinese painting traditions and an intensely sensitive vision of the murmur of the world, since the end of the 1980s Fabienne Verdier’s work has ceaselessly explored the universe of elementary forms and has given shape to a multitude of relationships that, once revealed, are as clear as they are unheard of, between the physical and the spiritual, the individual and the universal, the inner being and inhabited nature. Springing forth from mature consideration, her paintings are as much “images of thought” as condensed slivers of what can be seen. Each brushstroke in the artist’s ascetically simple paintings is dictated by minute observation, infinitely careful listening, and a meditation on the singular vibration of each moment of the world. The perception of cosmic unity can only be achieved by shedding one’s own perspective and sense of self, thanks to which the artist’s work offers the spectator the same chance to embark on this transformative pathway.

Poétique de la ligne invites us on a journey through the work of Fabienne Verdier, a ceaseless exploration of the line as a vehicle for universal poetry. After studying calligraphy techniques, she has transcended them and made them the starting point for a personal visual language in which the line becomes the living memory of a gesture and the incarnation of invisible forces.

In Fabienne Verdier’s art, the line is not merely a formal delimitation; it is the expression of tension, breath and vital energy. At the start of her career, the artist followed in the footsteps of traditional Chinese calligraphy, where each stroke unfolds like an intimate dance between brush, ink and canvas. Under the influence of her masters, the line becomes an extension of her body, echoing the subtle balance between intention and improvisation. These early explorations reveal a meditative rigour, while pointing to her desire to transcend codes and create a new grammar.

Over the years, Fabienne Verdier has opened up to other dimensions of expression. She has introduced a monumentality into her work as the lines widen and intensify, becoming dynamic trajectories that capture forces in motion. Her large, custom-made brushes allow the pigment to flow in broad pulsations, conveying both the breadth of a gesture and the depth of an intention. The line becomes a phenomenon in itself, shifting between fluidity and rupture, minimalism and abundance.

The line is also the locus of a reflection on time. Each brushstroke seems to capture a suspended moment, in which the artist’s gesture becomes a metaphor for transition and impermanence. In its continuous movement, the line contains both beginning and end, momentum and resolution. And always, it transcends its visual function to become an experience. The viewer is confronted with these different trajectories and invited to follow the artist’s gesture in their mind, to enter into the very flow of creation. The line becomes language, memory and energy, building bridges between past, present and future, as the artist reminds us that it embodies a certain vision of existence and a certain poetry, too.

This poetry of the line resonates particularly with Fabienne Verdier’s interest in natural phenomena. Some of her series translate the movements of wind and water or the vibrations of sound. These explorations, fuelled by close observation of natural forces, reflect a search for complicity between the work and the world’s energies. The line then becomes a form of writing that can convey nature’s invisible rhythms and reconcile humanity with its environment.

In the Upper Galleries of the Château, the exhibition begins by a dot and goes on to explore Fabienne Verdier’s multifaceted line in all its diverse forms. With her interest in natural phenomena, invisible forces and vital energy, the artist likes to create a dialogue between her art and other disciplines, such as music, philosophy and science. From one room to another, visitors will discover works by Julius Bockelt, Cédric Lebonnois, Ralph Steiner (1899-1986), Anaïs Tondeur, Étienne Léopold Trouvelot (1827-1895) and Franz Erhard Walther in conversation with hers.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Fabienne Verdier was born in France in 1962. Since completing her studies in fine arts school, her artistic career has been marked by her confrontation of thought systems from different cultures and time periods. Her creative process is fed by a hybridised knowledge that shows itself through the use of various technical inventions (oversized brushes, glaze mixing and film sketches). After her fine arts school studies, she continued her education with painting masters in China from 1983 to 1992. She then spent many years immersed in the work of the Expressionist abstract painters to create a series of paintings for the Fondation H. Looser in Zurich. Between 2009 and 2013, she took on the paintings of the Flemish Primitives (Van Eyck, Memling and Van der Weyden) to create an exhibition for the Groeninge Museum in Bruges. In 2014, she set up a studio at the Julliard School in New York for the institution’s first ever research laboratory on sound and image waves. From 2015 to 2017, she collaborated with Alain Rey on the fiftieth edition of the Petit Robert, creating 22 paintings in celebration of the creative energy of language. In 2019, the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence showcased the artist with a retrospective exhibition covering her career since her return from China up to her latest works depicting the Bibémus quarries next to Montagne Sainte-Victoire. The same year, one of her paintings was chosen out of a twelve-work series to feature on a new stamp for the French postal service. Verdier frequently exhibits her work in both Europe and Asia.

Fabienne Verdier is represented by Galerie Lelong & Co and by Galerie Waddington Custot.