Bendana | Pinel Art Contemporain is pleased to present ‘La Lumière du Nord’, a group exhibition dedicated to Swedish artists, on the occasion of KONSTellation, a contemporary art trail in the Marais organized by the Institut suédois to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Works by emerging or established artists, photography or painting, the proposed pieces testify to the richness of the Swedish art scene. Maria Friberg, Thomas Broomé and Peter Stridsberg express their admiration for light, whether natural, artificial or pictorial, in productions that poetically address the themes of man and nature.
In the series Mirroring Nature, Maria Friberg makes a strong and committed statement and confronts the viewer with his own guilt. The details of the landscapes captured in each work reflect the face of those who approach them. It invites the viewer to appreciate a contrasting nature: sometimes virgin, other times largely destroyed by man. From these photos, cut out like old elegant mirrors, a sensitivity is released, a touch of hope. The disturbing ambiguity of this show calls for meditation on the fate of a threatened nature with which it is time to reconnect.
In his two paintings, Thomas Broomé intuitively imagines a parallel universe, inspired by reality, which stands as a mirror of the world. If the mirror is usually a symbol of truth, here it becomes a medium for reaching his ideal. Thus, PicNic reshapes reality and temporality and, like an open window to a dreamlike place, offers an escape in these difficult times, in which imagination is our best ally. ShadowPlay in MirrorLand proposes a reflection on our perception of the human body. The search for an unattainable perfection, conforming to trends, pushes us to put ourselves on stage, and to present an image of the persons we want to be, forgetting those we really are.
Through his lens, the young artist Peter Stridsberg focuses on nature and its complex relationship with the human environment. In Tulipa gesneriana, he explores plants with a didactic eye, and examines their role within everyday life and the home. Through an immersive scenographic work, The presence in the exploration of once own soil and trying to follow the footsteps of nature underlines the frontier between man, nature and the stage and is thus part of a current approach of the artist. To find one’s place in front of nature is not an easy task. It requires to impregnate oneself with what surrounds us, and above all to search for one’s roots and understand one’s belonging.
