Mélanie Ohayon
Artistic project director, exhibition curator, founder of Pop Up Gallery
The Pop up Amiens gallery, conceived and directed like an ephemeral project by Mélanie Ohayon for three years, privileged emerging artists and explored the artistic language at the crossroads of several universes. Without limits of genres or mediums, within the framework of its programming, the artists presented by the gallery shared an aesthetic combining the codes of contemporary art with those of subcultures.
The gallery has supported its artists through projects such as residences, exhibitions, international fairs, outside the walls ... In addition to a program based on the big names of contemporary art, the Pop up gallery has put emphasis on young creation, artistic and aesthetic discoveries.
Based on the meeting between regional and national artists, to testify to the vitality of the artistic scene, to encourage the creation of plastic works such was the ambition of the Pop up gallery. In this sense, the artistic line chosen has favored singular and current aesthetic choices with the work of artists such as Mathieu Roquigny, Jimmy Ruf, Sylvain Barberot, Virginie Hucher, Dominique De Beir, Elzo Durt, Qubo Gas, David Mesguich or again Sinyoung Park.
The gallery accompanied the public towards new aesthetic explorations while aiming at a democratization of Art forms. As close as possible to artistic discrepancies, the public was able to experience the arts of today during exhibitions, debates, meetings and workshops.
Corporate
(May 2017)
From the aestheticization of Renaissance painting to the violence of the Viennese actionists, the human figure, the body is the source of artistic fascination. Sometimes absent, sometimes present, it is corporeality that questions the work of Virginie Hucher. Painting, molding, photography, there are many explorations. The carnal envelopes are emptied of their "substance". They become universal without any individuality: bald, similar to each other, gaping mouth. The soul has withdrawn from this painful body forced by an imposed or suffered posture. Like the contorted bodies of Berline De Bruyckere, Virginie Hucher gives us a very brutal representation of the body, excessively destructured in the series the choreographed body, dehumanized in the imposed figures. Although these bodies seem empty, a very great suffering in the posture is felt, a loneliness, an evil wanting to get out of these body envelopes. Like some artists in the 60s questioning the limits of the body, considering it as a simple receptacle, Virginie Hucher continues in this line through a work of peeling the body. In volume the artist reduces it to pieces, in painting it "disappears". This meticulous surgery gradually assassinates him, although the aesthetics are attractive. Large areas of contrasting paint catch the eye. Could it be that they are only bodies? Can we attribute any feelings to them? Far from the multiplicity of being formalized by Freudian theories, the body is restricted to its simple materiality. Difficult to admit for the complex being represented by humans. Unloaded, disarmed, emptied, he is reduced to his greatest fear, his ephemerality.