FABIENNE VERDIER IN CÉZANNE COUNTRY

Three venues and a “season”
Musée Granet
Musée du Pavillon de Vendôme
Cité du Livre

Throughout the summer, three leading cultural institutions in Aix-en-Provence—the Musée Granet, the Musée du Pavillon de Vendôme and the Cité du Livre, Galerie Zola—will explore the various aspects of Fabienne Verdier’s work as well as her latest creations, inspired by a year of visiting sites familiar to Cézanne.

Musée Granet
From 21 June to 13 October 2019, in an exhibition space covering more than 450 square meters, the Musée Granet follows in Fabienne Verdier’s footsteps, from her return to France from China, where she lived for over a decade, to works created in recent months in the quarries of Bibémus, opposite Sainte-Victoire, at the top of the legendary mountain, in Saint-Antonin, and on other sites. This is the artist’s first retrospective in France.

This exhibition will allow visitors to appreciate the artist’s work in its entirety, better understand the lessons she learned from Chinese scholars in the wake of the Cultural Revolution and explore how, following her return to France, Fabienne Verdier developed a new aesthetic by drawing on major intellectual currents in Western painting, from the Flemish Primitives to the Abstract Expressionists. As visitors move through the museum, they explore six major themes that shed light on the evolution and richness of the artist’s work.

The final rooms feature her latest works painted outdoors in Cézanne country, revealing for the first time how, over a period of almost two years, the artist drew inspiration from Mont Sainte-Victoire and other places familiar to Cézanne.

Musée du Pavillon de Vendôme
The Musée du Pavillon de Vendôme will present Fabienne Verdier’s working techniques from 21 June to 13 October 2019. In this unusual 18th century space dedicated to con-temporary art, set in a garden at the heart of the city, visitors can admire the artist’s “nomadic studio”, which enabled her to work in nature itself. Items include brushes made from rat whiskers and rooster feathers, and an entire room devoted to drawings and gouaches made atop Mont Sainte-Victoire; a film, Walking Painting, provides insight into the complexity of the artist’s creative process. Echoing this, on the first floor, a “storyboard” reveals the different phases of work that led to her most recent creations inspired by places familiar to Cézanne and on show at the Musée Granet.

Cité du Livre — Galerie Zola
From 21 June to 14 September, the Cité du Livre — Galerie Zola presents Sound Traces—a truly immersive video installation. This cinematographic work was produced during a residency in the summer of 2017 at the invitation of the Academy of the Aix-en-Provence Opera Festival.

In the Chapel of the Visitation in the heart of the city, Fabienne Verdier studied with four of the most talented young quartets of their generation, to discover how the writing of each musical work might reveal, through her brushwork, the voids and forms that allow us to hear these works in a totally new way, as the artist explains: “This work is a visual and sound journey that allows the spectator to feel music and painting at the rhythm and tempo of their imagination”.

These exhibitions are part of a packed programme of events aimed at a wide audience, including talks, encoun-ters, concerts, educational workshops, guided tours, dances, readings and more. (See below for a more detailed programme or visit museegranet-aixenprovence.fr). An exhibition is also being held at the same time in the cloister of the Prieuré de Sainte-Victoire, restored in 2018 by the Friends of Sainte-Victoire. A large-format photograph by Philippe Chancel depicting the artist working on the crest of Mont Sainte-Victoire will be presented alongside some twenty facsimiles of drawings made in October 2018 by Fabienne Verdier.

Curators
Musée Granet: Bruno Ely, Head Curator and Director
Musée du Pavillon de Vendôme: Christel Roy, Director/co-curator: Alexandre Vanautgaerden, Royal Academy of Belgium
Cité du Livre—Galerie Zola: Fabienne Verdier

Works of art exhibited
About fifty large-format works(paintings, drawings and objects of the painter)Video documents and digital devices. Video installation (Sound Traces at the Cité du Livre, Galerie Zola). Nomadic studio and giant brush.