Artists: Florian & Michael Quistrebert
Exhibition title: Melancholia
Venue: Crèvecoeur, Paris, France
Date: January 30 – March 6, 2021
Photography: © Margot Montigny, all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Crèvecoeur, Paris
Melancholia presents two new series of paintings on the edge of abstraction and figuration: landscapes and portraits. At the crossroads of different histories such as Gothic art, Cubism, Constructivism and experimental cinema, these two series reflect the artists’ desire to go back to a more quiet, more voluptuous, almost gaseous painting.
“After several years turned towards an obese materialist painting (cf. The Light of the Light, 2016, Palais de Tokyo, Paris), we have come back to a misty geometry, as at the time of Ex Futuro (2010). But instead of spray can (which is industrial and dirty), we went for ink sprays (which are luminous and pure). The idea was still to produce an excessive form of painting that verges on being sickening. In our last paintings, the colour shadings waver between the dusky shades of Georgia O’Keeffe and airbrushed SF landscapes.”
The contrasts between the two series play on texture, colour effects, curves and scale. They subtly compose the architecture of this new exhibition: where melancholic faces hover, seemingly freeing themselves from the fiery landscapes, in transit, that face them. Like an apotheotic battle between day and night.
“Light is the central element of our painting, it could even be said that our different series are portraits with light as their sole subject.
With light, what is interesting is the ambivalence that shifts it from the sacred to the material, from the esoteric to the technological…”
Melancholia takes its name from the film by Lars von Trier in which the Earth lives its last moments before being hit by the eponymous planet. This is the sixth exhibition of Florian & Michael Quistrebert at Crèvecœur.
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Ode to Théodore Frandsen de Schomberg, 2020 Sprayed ink on burlap, 81 × 60 cm, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, MOUNT X, 2020, Sprayed ink on burlap 160 × 120 cm, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, MOUNT XI, 2020, Sprayed ink on burlap 160 × 120 cm, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia V, 2020 Sprayed ink on burlap 81 × 60 cm, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia VIII, 2020, Sprayed ink on burlap, 122 × 90 cm, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, MOUNT IX, 2020, Sprayed ink on burlap 160 × 120 cm, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, MOUNT VIII, 2020, Sprayed ink on burlap 160 × 120 cm, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia VI, 2020 Sprayed ink on burlap 81 × 60 cm, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Water Fall, 2020 Sprayed ink on burlap 200 × 300 cm, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Melancholia, 2021, exhibition view, Crèvecoeur, Paris, © Margot Montigny, Courtesy of the artists and Crèvecœur, Paris
