After Jim Dine, Claude Viallat, and Tadashi Kawamata, the GGL Foundation is pleased to dedicate an exhibition to Olympe Racana-Weiler (born in 1990). The artist is the first to kick off a succession of three female figures in contemporary art. Olympe Racana-Weiler experiences her painting like a dancer experiences music. The artist, with multiple talents, creates a symphony of colors in her abstract canvases, often in a format that confronts the immense. Known for accurately capturing the poetry of painting, the artist is guided by her instinct and energy, never allowing herself to be overwhelmed by the power of the spaces she composes.
The young painter is among the five creators who have created permanent works within the iconic building of the Hôtel Richer de Belleval, namely Jim Dine, Abdelkader Benchamma, Marlène Mocquet, Jan Fabre, and now Olympe Racana-Weiler. In the boudoir leading to the rooms, she created “Le Chant de la sibylle” by painting an entire room, walls and ceiling, for a whole month. The result is a profound, joyful, and exhilarating immersion into painting.

This sense of oceanic sentiment is somewhat what one will experience in her exhibition, which brings together paintings, as well as engravings and a wood drawing. Little-known is the fact that a large part of the young painter’s work is engraved, and “Journal” allows us to explore this aspect with monotype screen prints, carborundum prints, and wood engravings. What characterizes these prints is the emergence of the face, as if a saintly visage is emerging from the material. Faces that one can imagine buried beneath the paint in the paintings.

“Le Chant de la sibylle” evokes the long and narrow corridor, the “Antre de la sibylle,” at the end of which the prophetess of Cumae (near Naples) delivered her oracles in ancient times, but also the eponymous medieval liturgy, mainly sung in Catalan, which deals with the end of times. The exhibition is titled “Journal” because Racana-Weiler’s practice is built day by day, drawing its essence from everything that daily life brings to the artist’s life.

Richard Leydier, Artistic Director of the GGL Foundation.