From March 28 to April 22, 2017, artist Edouard Wolton organizes a dialogue between matter and light in the prestigious collection of the Mineralogy Museum. The Museum is located in the heart of the Luxembourg garden and houses one of the largest and oldest collections of minerals in the world. Edouard Wolton invites us on a journey to the infinitessimal as part of a meditation on the astral origins of the Earth. The artist allows us, by his choice of subject and his detailled organization, a means to comprehend the origin and construction of the mineral specimens.
Wolton will install his work in the center of the museum on a tubular central structure of polished aluminum. An assemblage of photographs become paintings, that, in turn, reveal the depth of the minerals and the inner logic of their constitution. The assemblage includes 18 panels, which began as photographs of minerals from the collection of the Mineralogy Museum, which were enlarged and magnified to 1 meter by 70 cm. In addition, Wolton uses a CMYK-color process and reworked the panels in ink and oil. Small colorful and figurative paintings punctuate the visit.
By photographing the specimens at very close distance, Walton leads the visitor on a journey to the infinitessimal, crossing thresholds that evoke the formation of the Earth. From a distance we see the mineral shape in its entirety but up close the enlargement of the photo, the successive layers of paintings, inks and engravings, and the gradient of glazes create the sensation of losing the physical borders in a close chromatic pictorial domain. Like the collector of landscaped jasper, or of oriental jade, the visitor passes through a succession of states to find hidden landscapes, valleys, caves.
The paintings present in the first part of the exhibit maintain a close personal relationship between the mineral structure and the history of art, whereas the small-sized canvases hung at the top of the furniture make the stones appear like stars piercing the night, or like points of light which arise after the discovery of a beautiful mineral in the mines.
Since 2012, Edouard Wolton has envisioned a subjective view of nature that summons imagination, romanticism and science. His method aims at achieving a figurative and symbolic representation based on personal recompositions that take into account as much the objective properties of the physical objects as the knowledge that it holds. At the moment of creation he proceeds by mental syntheses founded on the notion of contemplation.
Edouard Wolton's approach is poetic and empirical. It offers a look at the mineral part and the astral part of the organized world.
Wolton allows us to perceive the slow metamorphosis, the imperceptible changes of form and nature which allow the minerals to be reinvented and remain contemporary. Within the scientific and classificatory envioronnement of the museum, it takes time and perspective to allow the eye to capture the imaginary.
This exhibition, presented by the Filles du Calvaire Gallery, is the result of a joint curatorial staff with Anne-Marie Morice, director of Transverse, and Didier Nectoux, director of the Mineralogy Museum MINES ParisTech.
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| Opale, 2016. CMYK color model on 350 g Hahnemûlhe Etching Museum paper (Single print). Copyright: Edouard Wolton. | Structure, 2016. Acrylic and oil on canvas (26.5 x 35 cm). Copyright: Edouard Wolton. |
Access the temporary exhibit for free with your museum ticket.
Find all information regarding to accessing the museum here.
Find the press release (in French) here.
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Edouard Wolton was born in 1986 in Paris, where he resides to this day. Wolton graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2010. During his residency in 2011, he directed a workshop at 104 on the relationship between sculpture, installation and landscape painting. Walton also performed a residency in Leipzig, Germany, at the Spinnerei in 2012. Wolton was a member of the cross-workshop between ENS and ENSBA in 2012. Additionally, he has participated in numerous group exhibitions and has coordinated several collective projects, notably in the field of publishing.
2011 Member of the « atelier croisé » ENSBA/ENS, 2011/2012
2010 Obtained his DNSAP at Beaux-Arts of Paris
2008 Student at UDK (universität der kunst) in Berlin, Germany
2005 Student at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts of Paris (ENSBA) in Dominique Gauthier and Wernher Bouwens’ workshop.
2017 Cosmos, Musée de minéralogie MINES ParisTech, Paris
SoloShow - ArtParis Artfair, Grand Palais, Paris
2015 Agartha / Photométéores, Les filles du calvaire gallery, Paris
2012 Geometrie der Natur, Spinnerei, Leipzig, Allemagne
2010 T, for DNSAP, Dominique Gauthier’s workshop at Beaux-Arts in Paris
2009 « Les puits », Beaux-Arts gallery in Paris
2008 « Les mines », for DNAP, Beaux-Arts gallery in Paris
2007 « Les stations », Beaux-Arts gallery in Paris
2017 « Printers Matters », 23 rue Richer, Paris
2016 « COAL s'expose », Le Consulat, Paris
« Matin, Midi et Soir », Rue Visconti Gallery, Paris
« PRINTJAM / Multiples Art Days », La Maison Rouge, Paris
« Sevres OutDoors », Sèvres
« PRINTJAM », Danske Grafikeres museum, Silkeborg, Danemark
« 2015 Pléiades », Clovis XV room, Bruxelles, Belgium
“PRINTJAM”, Circulo del arte, Barcelona, Spain
« Pléiades », Introduction, Festival META, Laurent Mueller Gallery, Paris
« J'ai pris une pierre pour voir le monde », Le Huit, Paris
« 2014 PRINTJAM », Archiv massiv, Spinnerei, Leipzig, Germany
« Esperance Tuning », espace des arts sans frontières, Paris
2013 « Vues », Domaine de Chamarande, France
« 58ème salon de Montrouge », Le Befroi, Montrouge
2012 « Excavation », exhibit with Fabien Cosson, Lhomond room, Paris
“Tranches de Carrés sur Tranches de Cercles », Saline royale d' Arc-et-Senans, France.
« Lander: polysémie du paysage », Beaux-arts of Rennes, France
2011 « Tire-toi une bûche », la générale en manufacture, Sèvres
2010 « Sans titre », at 104, Paris
2009 « Goldener Kentaur 2009 », Münchner Künstlerhaus, Germany
« Paris/Vienne », Beaux-Arts of Paris at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Vienne, France and Austria
Exhibit with the editing / printing team at the Beaux-Arts of Paris, Beaux-Arts gallery, Paris
« L’estampe contemporaine », Cultural Center of the Ermitage of Reuil-Malmaison
2008 « Edouard Wolton/Saphir Shraga », Beaux-Arts gallery of Paris
2015 Pierre Cardin award for painting, attributed by the Académie des Beaux-Arts
Residency CRISTAL, Megève
2012 Residency at Spinnerei, Leipzig
2011 Lauréat of the award Verdaguer 2011 for painting, attributed by the Académie of France
2010 Residency at 104, Paris
2009 Nominated for the drawing award of the Académie des Beaux-Arts
May Show, award in painting
2009/2015 Professor in engraving and creation at the Ateliers de Sèvres, Paris
2007/2009 Monitor in lithography / screen printing of the editing and printing team of the Beaux-Arts of Paris.
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Musée de Minéralogie
Mines Paris - PSL
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