Valérie Favre: Un billet pour quatre pièces

11-13 rue des Arquebusiers, Paris

Spanning four rooms, the show brings together around twenty works that interweave long-standing series with new, previously unseen pieces. Across them, hybrid figures, dreamlike landscapes, and enigmatic narratives unfold like stage sets or constellations, giving shape to transformations that are both sensual and philosophical.

The exhibition invites viewers to step into this poetic space, where painting becomes a performance and every image a dialogue that celebrates metamorphosis, creation, and the act of painting itself. This moment of metamorphosis, that fleeting instant of transition from one state to another, is celebrated by the painter as an explosion of energy—a veritable fireworks display. The nature of her protagonists, as so often, remains fluid; it is precisely from this suspension that they draw a cosmic, radiant vitality.

Even the glasses in the still lifes D’or et d’argent appear to hold a promise. In these new paintings, the vessels encounter the viewer as actors. This is less an academic exercise than a political manifesto. Sometimes filled, sometimes empty, with the loaf of bread positioned before or behind them, this modest, discreet pair of water and bread—essential sustenance—means more to the artist than gold or silver. This sense of calm is further enhanced by the grey or blue background and reduced to its essentials.

The exhibition runs until Dec 19, 2025.