Grégoire CARLE Le lierre et l'araignée

A river flowing through undergrowth where wildflowers are blooming. Rocks catching the afternoon light; a trout flicking through the water between them... This is the idyllic setting with which Le Lierre et l'araignée opens. Published by Éditions Dupuis (Aire Libre collection), in January 2024, this marvellous book focuses on a single locality - Grégoire Carle's native Alsace. Here, along the banks of the Rhine, the artist travels upstream, both geographically and metaphorically - in his memory. Since, as Carle writes, memories "well up from the depths", in 2020 - during that period when time was suspended due to the pandemic - the artist took it upon himself to delve into his memories and trace them back to the springs from which they sprang. In preference to the white cypress spring, which silences or erases memories, Grégoire Carle favours the Mnemosyne spring, "the spring that enables us to retain the memory of the past and so avoid making the same mistakes over and over". Ecological fable, clarion call to resist political oppression and testimony of a grandson's admiration for his grandfather, Le Lierre et l'araignée is a story of filiation and transmission in which memories of childhood interweave with memories of family history and those of the history of Alsace.  

Huberty & Breyne at Chapon - 21, is delighted to host Grégoire Carle's first-ever gallery exhibition. Through a selection of forty-plus works of art - beautifully flowing compositions, meditative full-page illustrations and newly made drawings - the artist's approach is shown to full advantage, in both the scenes of quiet intimacy and those depicting the crassest violence of which History is capable. His subtle watercolour palette conveys the delicate shifts of nature through the seasons, intensifying and darkening in his representations of chaos and horror. Grégoire Carle's drawings are both powerful and moving, challenging our ideas and touching our emotions, and work equally well when seen on the wall (some of the plates from the book were exhibited at the Angoulême and Central Vapeur festivals in 2024). The Huberty & Breyne exhibition runs from 6 June to 19 July.

PRIVATE VIEW
Thuesday 05 June2025
from 06:00 p.m to 09:00 p.m

EXHIBITION
From Friday 06 June
to Saturday 19 July 2025