Energy Lines by Fabienne Verdier
31.03.2023
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Collaborating with Christie’s Middle East, Custot Gallery in Dubai is hosting the solo exhibition of abstract French painter Fabienne Verdier titled Energy Lines. The show will end on 19 May 2023.

The main subjects which Verdier explores in her art are the dynamism of forces in nature, movement, and immobility; she is also interested in the physics of colour. The exhibition includes her 15 new artworks of different scales that bring together vividly coloured backgrounds and black lines that, according to the artist, were inspired by “the lines that the mountains, the clouds, the dunes, the sea, the prairies draw in the distance” and that are “in constant motion.”

Fabienne Verdier, Au-delà des terres arides, 2022. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas. 183 × 381 cm. Photo by Inès Dieleman

The Energy Lines series sums up Verdier’s long study of wavelengths of the rainbow colours. Talking about the background of the exhibited canvases, she says: “I wanted the vibrations of the pigments to create fields of maximal energetic vibrations that vary depending on the light of day.” The electromagnetic waves making up the colours possess extremely elevated frequencies, and each of these frequencies awakens in one a sensation of colour. So Verdier says that she “attempted to paint the green of fields in spring, the purple or pinks of the sky at dawn and the blues of a summer night.”

About the artist

Fabienne Verdier (born 1962, Paris, France) is a contemporary artist residing in France. In 1983, she graduated from École des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse, France. In 1984, she was awarded a post-graduate scholarship at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, China, where she had been studying painting, aesthetics, and philosophy for ten years with some of the last great Chinese painting masters. Verdier became the first non-Chinese woman to be awarded a post-graduate diploma in FA by the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute.

In her art practice, Verdier employs techniques and traditions of both Western and Eastern art: she combines elements of Western Modernism and traditional Chinese calligraphy. Through dashes, circular shapes, and curved lines, the artist illustrates on her canvas the energy flows which cross the universe and our brain and mold the landscapes around us. 

Fabienne Verdier, Par le chemin des crêtes au crépuscule, 2022. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas. 72 × 131 9/10 in | 183 × 335 cm

Verdier’s art making process mostly consists of three phases. First, the artist records her research and sketches her thoughts and observations in notebooks. Then the canvas is being prepared: she applies several layers of pigment and glaze in order to obtain the desired degree of vibration, saturation, and depth of color. After that, Verdier stands on the stretcher and paints using a gigantic paintbrush and tools she has invented by herself.

Verdier’s artworks have been displayed in numerous solo and group shows: Arias – Nouvelles estampes, Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris, France (2021); Fabienne Verdier, Vortex, Waddington Custot, London, England (2020); Sur les terres de Cézanne, Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France (2019); Ainsi la nuit, Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris, France (2018); L’expérience du langage, Musée Voltaire, Geneva, Switzerland (2017);  Un Autre Œil, MASC, Sables d’Olonne, France (2019); Picasso – Gorky – Warhol, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2018); Restless Gestures, National Museum of Art, Architecture & Design, Oslo, Norway (2017); Fabienne Verdier Meets Sigmar Polke. Talking Lines, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2017); The World Meets Here, Custot Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2016); and many others.

The public collections which include Verdier’s paintings are Centre international du vitrail, Troyes, France; Musée Camille Claudel, Nogent-sur-Seine, France; Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France; Kunsthaus Zürich, gift of Foundation Hubert Looser, Zürich, Switzerland; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; Foundation François Pinault, Paris, France, and Venice, Italy; Ministry of Culture, Beijing, China; and many others. 

To learn more about Energy Lines, please visit the show’s official web page.

You may also be interested in visiting Twilight and Debris at 1X1 Art Gallery.