“I walk around the world like a ghost, and sometimes I question whether I even exist. Whether I've ever existed at all.” Paul Auster, Travels in the Scriptorium
Vulnerability, strength, impermanence: The work of Alexandra Devaux sheds light on youth at its tipping point, when innocence vanishes and the scars of life begin to emerge. As a female artist painting masculinity, she disrupts the patriarchal pictorial tradition. Her feminist approach is never bitter, however, but always soothing. She unmistakably loves the bodies she portrays, treating them with both admiration and reverence. Devaux depicts the inner fire borne by young men, providing a snapshot of an age when everything still seems possible. Her models are representative of a generation straddling the line between sweet and sour, between bubble gum and tobacco smoke, between innocence and adult games. The boys stand beside one another, staring blankly into space. Their long and elegant fingers, either tightened in the air or casually holding a cigarette, contrast with the gravity of their faces and postures. Half-naked, sometimes prostrate, lying in the intimacy of a living room or posted up in the street, these characters recount soundless stories about the world they inhabit, producing a sometimes Lynchian feeling of unsettling strangeness.
Characteristic of Devaux’s approach is the sensation of depth that she imparts to her paintings. Haziness, stark transitions, and heavy brushstrokes constantly remind us that we are in a pictorial world. A single hue, whether it is the indigo of a shirt or the crimson of a piece of underwear, often dominates the picture. Sometimes, the colour is so important as to become the subject matter itself, such as in the shiny surfaces of the resin works: like a camera lens momentarily blurred by a couple of water drops, causing the models to temporarily disappear.
Celine Baumann , Schwesterprojekt queer collective
ENGLISH / GERMAN here
French artist , born in Paris, live and work in between Lausanne and Paris
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Master graduate at ENSAD - Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs , Paris , honors of the degree jury
--- Awards
2010 - First prize « Ateliers d’art de France» Paris
1999 - First prize of la S.E.M.A ( Art and craft council ) Paris Ile de France
--- Exhibitions
( 2021 - 65 ème Salon de Montrouge - France )
2020 - Print the screenshot - exposition collective - Lausanne - Switzerland - ( annulée )
2020 - Visions - Nuit des bains - Freestudios - Genève - Switzerland
2019 - Le garçon du jeudi soir - galerie Zwahlen - Orbe - Switzerland
2019 - Let me be vulnerable - curated by Schwesterprojekt queer collective - Werkraum Warteck pp - Basel
2019 - La Menuiserie - Lutry - Switzerland
2018 - Biennale Emergences - Paris
2018 - Curator and artist : "Tu n'étais qu'une pierre , tu es un prodige " Feldman studio Paris
2017 - Pop up - Galerie first - Genève
2013 - Exposition Hubert de Malherbe- Galerie Philippe Sinceux- Paris
2013 - AD intérieurs - Métamorphose - AD magazine - Condenast - Art Curial- Paris
2009 - Talents aux Arts Déco - 50ème anniversaire du Ministère de la Culture, ENSAD Paris
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2011 - 2014 - Master teacher - Ecole Nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs - ENSAD Paris