Gaël Davrinche. Corpus Botanica

Julien Verhaeghe, Gaël Davrinche. Corpus Botanica, Paris, Éditions Lord Byron, 2024

1st edition
Edition of 500 copies
Hardcover, 22.7 x 29.8 cm, 304 pages
Trilingual edition in English, French and German
Translated into German by Barbara Hahn
Translated into English by Simon Thurston
ISBN : 978-2-491901-71-4
Gaël Davrinche. Corpus Botanica is the first published work by Gaël Davrinche devoted to flowers.

Gaël Davrinche is a French painter born in 1971. He lives and works in the Lille region. After graduating from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2000, and teaching drawing and painting at the Ateliers de Sèvres since 2007, he has since pursued an international artistic career. His prolific body of work, in the form of paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints, mainly reinvests the classical genres of portraiture and still life, in a plastic dialogue between tradition and its complete deconstruction.

The artist never ceases to dig, to delve, to draw from the heart of Art History in the works of his illustrious peers what, in his opinion, is the very essence of painting. Frequently borrowing from the graphic register of childhood, he humorously quotes and caricatures the masterpieces of European art as part of a long-running series entitled "Les Revisités". Raising the question of the legitimacy of the painted portrait, at a time when commissions no longer exist, Davrinche has refined his thinking over the years, notably with the "Under the skin" and "Kalashnikov" series. Basically free, his gesture is sometimes incisive and nervous, sometimes perfectly meticulous. The boldness with which the artist alternates styles, moving from learned realism to the most spontaneous expressionism, illustrates his attachment to painting as a medium with inexhaustible possibilities, despite the fact that critics have repeatedly announced the contrary.

Perfectly complementary, the Memento Mori bring a pensive breath to Gaël Davrinche's work. In this series of drawings and paintings depicting wilted flowers, the artist approaches the timeless theme of the cycle of life through the prism of allegory, and ultimately draws a portrait of man facing his own existential anxiety. (Fanny Giniès)

Julien Verhaeghe holds a PhD in Aesthetics from the Université Paris 8 and a diploma from the Beaux-arts de Paris-Cergy, and is an exhibition curator and researcher in aesthetics. He teaches at the Université Catholique de l'Ouest in Angers and at the École Camondo in Paris. In 2018, his work as an art critic and curator led him to create the review Possible, dedicated to the practice of art criticism and the organization of events to put it into practice. In 2019, he has been nominated for the AICA-France prize for art criticism. His books include Art & Flux. Un portrait du contemporain published by L'Harmattan in 2014, and Photographie, Media et Capitalisme published by L'Harmattan in 2009 and co-edited with François Soulages.