Every year in the Grand Palais, Art Capital Paris presents the work of over 2,000 artists across four main categories: Drawing & Watercolors, Independent Artists, Comparisons, and French Artists. For the 2020 edition, art lovers and collectors can visit the event from February 12th-16th and meet artists, discover the contemporary scene, and find an artwork they love. Singulart attended the exclusive opening on February 11th to meet with some of our artists and discover the importance of showing work at salons like these.
Meet the Artists
Franck Le Boulicaut: The Upside Down Painter
With two paintings being shown in the Drawing & Watercolors and French Artist salons, Franck Le Boulicaut showed us his work and told us about his unique technique of painting upside down. He described how working on the canvas from a different perspective led to more precision and bypassing preconceived notions of what a painting should look like. When we asked him why he participates in salons like Art Capital, he told us:
“I participate in important shows frequented by gallery owners, shows like the Salon D’Automne and Art Capital. Funnily enough, I don’t do personal exhibitions because it’s a lot of work and it’s never completely equal; there may be one or two paintings that will be of a higher value, and to have the same level of quality on 30 or 40 paintings is a huge task.”
Franck Le Boulicaut
Clara Crespin Captures the Spirit of Notre Dame
Clara Crespin, an artist that used to work in the same studio as Le Boulicaut, showed us her piece in the Drawing & Watercolors salon. Her pictorial work lies somewhere between narrative figuration and lyrical abstraction, whether through painting, etching, or sculpting. Her compositions are timeless, capturing the past, present and future all at once, and reflect inner discourses. We asked her the same question about the importance of exhibiting in salons like Art Capital, and she responded:
“These shows improve our visibility with gallery owners because in addition to the exhibition’s exposure, there has already been a selection process; none of the artists presenting their work were automatically accepted. There are also many collectors who trust that there are great artists exhibiting, so there is a high probability of selling. Exhibiting at the Grand Palais opens doors for artists, especially for when we apply to other projects, and it makes it easier to exhibit abroad.”
Clara Crespin
Hugo Aguilar’s Innovative Approach to Popular Mexican Art
While continuing on through the Grand Palais, we met up with Hugo Aguilar who was exhibiting with the Mexican Delegation of Artists. Aguilar is a prizewinning painter and sculptor who decided to take a different approach on traditional Mexican folk art through the work presented below. The work, entitled El Guardian de las Artes Populares en México (The Guardian of Popular Arts in Mexico) blends Indigenous Art with his own geometric and cubist style, choosing monochrome white over the more traditional brightly colored palette.
The Graceful Sculptures of Marie Sasik
We got to speak with Marie Sasik, an award-winning sculptor who works with plaster, bronze and clay to create her studies of the female form. Her artworks frequently appropriate the figure of Apsara, a water and cloud spirit featured prominently in the sculpture, literature, and painting of many South Asian and Southeast Asian Cultures. The artwork exhibited was a gracefully-realized sculpture that stood out from the rest.
Abstract Visions with Michel Debully
French artist Michel Debully uses his own innovative digital tools to create abstract artworks that play with transparence and geometric shapes. In 1980, Debully discovered a new natural law regarding the deconstruction of light in four colors, rather than six. By incorporating the techniques of different movements in geometric abstraction from the 20th century, including Constructivism, Bauhaus, Kinetic Art, Op Art and many others, the artist creates compositions that play with this new division of light. When we asked him what he likes about working with Singulart, he told us:
“I have been in contact with Singulart since the beginning. I’ve seen how well you’ve evolved, and it’s precisely the international aspect of the company that I like very much. For an artist, that’s what’s interesting: being presented to the whole world. Especially now with the internet, you can’t stop at France anymore. I’ve seen that you are developing well in terms of translations too, as the site is now available in eight languages.”
Michel Debully
The Documentary Photography of Souhayl A
Lastly, we spoke with the award-winning Franco-Moroccan photographer Souhayl A next to his featured work, Gangsta Dating Story #1. He made his debut as a street photographer where he captured random moments that were both absurd and sentimental using just his iPhone. Souhayl A’s work mainly focuses upon the relationships between men and women in closed, social groups such as those of the extreme right-wing societies in Russia or American gangs. When we asked him why he chose to work with Singulart, he told us:
“Because Singulart is the future! The classic gallery model no longer works, or works with difficulty nowadays, and it is necessary to diversify. Also for an artist, given the crisis in the art world, it’s always best to reduce production costs a little. With Singulart, the genius is that it is an online gallery, so you can upload photos on the internet and be able to print and purchase necessary packaging materials only once the order has been made. For a photographer like me, this process is very attractive. It fits in with my own business model.”
Souhayl A
