Galerie Alice Mogabgab held yesterday the opening of the exhibition “Selfie Flowers” in the presence of the artist Didier L’Honorey, who came to Lebanon for this special occasion.
Didier L’Honorey returns to Lebanon with a never before shown series of drawings, produced in 2010 with walnut stain and China ink, representing a basic flower, a simple flower: four petals, a stem in a pot. The whole forms an astonishing gallery of one hundred and fifty selfies, in which each flower appears alone, autonomous, singular, different.
The image fills the white paper in a frontal arrangement, always reproduced in the same rectangular vertical format of 65 x 50 cm.
Drawn, coloured in or sprayed in generous calligraphic movements, L’Honorey’s flowers do not refer to anything real; they do not represent any specific floral variety. They are born out of the artist’s imagination and his graphic exercises; each new flower emanates from the previous one.
Didier L’Honorey said: “My imaginary flowers are multiplied as if forever, but always different.”
The artist defies the rules of creation, as he repeatedly develops a single motif on one support, in one medium, thereby achieving the obviously simple. Varying his flower in a myriad of different attitudes: feminine, victorious, rebellious, voluptuous or radiant, invasive, cheeky or seductive, authoritarian, minimalist or abstract, menacing, nervous, humble or coquette, timid, discrete, or complex, bending over, curled up, square, round, fragile, poetic, depressive or funny … Didier L’Honorey conveys – subtly and casually – the act of painting with feeling.
Didier L’Honorey was born in France in 1957. He lives and works in Paris and Normandy. As a schoolboy L’Honorey had a passion for art history and dreamed about a free and independent life. At the age of 18 he decided to become a painter. Being autodidact he has drawn faces and trees, gradually moving towards painting flowers. His first solo exhibition took place in 1989 in Clamart, at the Musée Albert Chanot. In 2011, at the Villa Tamaris Arts Centre in La Seyne-sur-Mer, he presented Variété florale: oxygénante culture, a major retrospective of his flower paintings.
L’Honorey’s first solo show in Beirut took place in 2012 at the Galerie Alice Mogabgab and was followed in 2015 by a second show of paintings and collage works.
“Selfie Flowers” exhibition runs until Saturday 24 March 2018 at Galerie Alice Mogabgab.
Opening hours: Tuesday till Saturday from 10:00 am till 7:00 pm
Facebook: Alice Mogabgab Gallery
Instagram: alicemogabgabgallery