What Nelly Monnier offers is rare. She should be told. She samples, she paints, she combines, contextualising all that she does. Let’s situate Parpaing/Chagrin. Let’s Wikipedia it. It has to do with counterforts, metal anchoring points that support walls, brightly coloured council block façades when you pass through fairly jolly and prosperous regions, but for three days only. Zoom, select, copy, detach, paint, draw at least the question, for it is language. The light was temperate, then humid. After that the weather was very nice. By analogy, Nelly Monnier paints details sampled from the landscape, details that form signs. For the most part, they come from the decorative outskirts of medium-sized towns and villages in France. It is a repertoire, it is maintained, it is accurate. There are dates, passages, real places. It is not a newspaper, but photos, statements that become. You sense French punctum in it, linked undoubtedly to childhood. The punctum of the toponym, touch, illusion and duty. For the present presents. And sometimes, like a charm, it falls to painters to adjust and harmonise the shades of the format and subjects – even if they have scoliosis – and the idea of mud too. Like in javelin or discus throwing, some need only take it in hand, accelerate their pace, run, intensify, then let it go.

​

PRESS RELEASE