Reinventing The World

In its second exhibition, Galerie Bessières - Maison Levanneur, true to its ambition and its history, continues to explore the innovations of painting and its multiple forms of interaction with all contemporary mediums.  

Four established artists have been invited to occupy the 600 square meters of exhibition space in this former manor on the Island of the Impressionists:Bea Bonafini, Sepand Danesh, Sophie Ko and Octave Marsal.

Employing diverse mediums and materials, their approaches have an important common point: a mindful engagement with current times and issues. Each artist expresses such concerns in a personal and poetic vision. Rather than magically transcending reality, they combine reality’s very own materials in a creatively engaging way, thereby encouraging viewers to explore a poetic interpretation of the present.

Bea Bonafini, Sepand Danesh, Sophie Ko and Octave Marsal all have notably liberated approaches to appropriating and reinterpreting the state of our world. They also strive to preserve the ‘magic’ nature of images at a time when masses of visual representation are unfurling and being endlessly replicated.  Their refusal to be submerged by a surfeit of information and images becomes a form of resistance.Their personal narratives and poetic visions represent a form of opposition.

In Sépànd Danesh's paintings the symbols of Western history rise from a background decorated with Middle Eastern patterns. A new narrative is created at the intersection of these two worlds. Used as a recurring motif, the corner becomes simultaneously the vanishing point to escape the reality but also to protect himself. Thus he conceives a new encyclopedia of signs, a way of remaking his world.

The worlds contamination of Sophie Ko passes through the alteration of the material. From the early works,  made by burnt archival pictures, up to the current ones, composed with pure colored pigments, the artist creates new shapes in permanent evolution. These organic landscapes are made up of traces, signs of what has been, but also of forms in progress.

Through the stratification of different elements, Bea Bonafini designs new narratives by inserting elements of classical art into romantic landscapes. The artist conceives her visual language by mixing layers of personal history with references of world history. This is how she moulds a "poetic" narration of the world around her.

In these different creative processes, imitation is no longer the only possible reaction to the real object. Metamorphosis, allegory and hybridization become elements of resistance that allow artists to evoke other worlds or possible realities.

Biographies:
Bea Bonafini is an Italian, London-based artist. Moving between mediums and references, her practice reinvents visual complexities extracted from both historic and personal memory as a means of cultural and self discovery. From her textiles and drawings to her installations, Bonafini’s work carries sensuous immediacy and the traces of a dialogue between romanticised iconography of past and modern pictorial traditions. Bea Bonafini studied at the Royal College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art.  She has exhibited at Lychee One Galleru (solo), Zabludowicz Collection (solo), Fieldworks Gallery (solo), Roaming Projects, Gallery 46, Tramps Gallery, the Royal College of Art, the Place Theatre, Cob Gallery, Guest Project Space, the Slade School of Fine Art, and Central Saint Martins. Residencies include Platform Southwark Studio Residency, London (2018), Fibra Residency, Colombia (2018), Fieldworks Studio Residency, London (2017), Villa Lena, Tuscany (2016) and The Beekeepers Residency, Portugal (2015). 

Sépànd Danesh is born in 1984 in Téhéran (Iran). He lives and works in Paris. He studied at Ecole Nationale des Beau-Arts in Paris and Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Student of Giuseppe Penone and Philippe Cognée, his work has been shown at the Salon de Montrouge, at the 5th Marrakech Biennale, at the Institut de France, Mac / Val and the Poitou-Charentes FRACs. Among the personal exhibitions: "Fragments d’un voyage immobile" at the Art-Cade Gallery of the Grands Bains Douches (Marseille, 2017), "Des ruines pour origine" at the Backslash Gallery (Paris, 2016), "Angle mort" at the Cité des Arts in Chambéry (Chambéry, 2014).

Sophie Ko Chkheidze is born in 1981 in Tbilisi (Georgia). She lives and works in Milan, Italy. She studied at Academy of Fine Arts in Tbilisi and at Brera Academy in Milan. She won the Lissone MAC Painting Grand Prize in 2016 and participated in several group exhibitions in both foundations and art galleries. Her work has also been shown in several solo exhibitions including:  “Sporgersi nella notte”, texts by Marina Dacci and Maurizio Guerri at Renata Fabbri arte contemporanea (Milan, 2018), “Terra”, curated by Federico Ferrari at Galleria de’ Foscherari (Bologne, 2016), “Silva Imaginum" curated by Federico Ferrari at Renata Fabbri Arte Contemporanea (Milan, 2015); “Solo Show”, A+B Contemporary Art (Brescia, 2014), “Nel cielo dove qualcosa luccica” at Musée Ettore Archinti (Lodi, 2013);  Geografia Temporale at Nowhere Gallery (Milan, 2012).

Octave Marsal is a French drawing artist born in 1990; Octave is a whiz with pencils, makes virtuoso drawings in which he intermingles and superposes epochs as well as subjects. “Time and space are the basis of my work which is centred on the notion of utopia. Inspired by architectural drawings (by Palladio, Piranesi, Claude Parent, Frank Gehry, Yona Friedman) or Andō Hiroshige’s prints and Albrecht Dürer’s etchings, I create vast spaces and imaginary cities that emerge from nowhere and sometimes refer to specific urban or deserted geographical zones. Through a notation process of cumulative drawings in notebooks, I find inspiration in architectural motifs and styles from many periods to fashion singular, utopian worlds. The black and white, large or medium-sized drawings in pigment ink are large vistas of unlikely yet precisely defined places. Abundant architectural elements and details require close viewing which could lead beholders to experience a meditative journey.  The viewer’s body is thereby challenged in its perceptual abilities as they are plunged into a somewhat dizzying state of instability.” In 2017, he graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a Master of Arts. In 2014, he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. Shortlisted for the 2014 Lowe Nova Award for Creative Talent at Central Saint Martins College for the collaborative installation LAB created with Théo de Gueltzl.  

Bea Bonafini

Bea Bonafini is an Italian, London-based artist. She studied at the Royal College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art.

Sépànd Danesh

Sépànd Danesh is born in 1984 in Téhéran (Iran). He lives and works in Paris. He studied at Ecole Nationale des Beau-Arts in Paris and Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Student of Giuseppe Penone and Philippe Cognée, his work has been shown at the Salon de Montrouge, at the 5th Marrakech Biennale, at the Institut de France, Mac / Val and the Poitou-Charentes FRACs.

Sophie Ko

Sophie Ko Chkheidze is born in 1981 in Tbilisi (Georgia). She lives and works in Milan, Italy. She studied at Academy of Fine Arts in Tbilisi and at Brera Academy in Milan.

Octave Marsal

Octave Marsal is a French drawing artist born in 1990. In 2017, he graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a Master of Arts.