Regards croisés

Marking the second exhibition at its Saint-Germain-des-Prés space, Waddington Custot presents Regards croisés, a group exhibition bringing together fifteen of the gallery's artists. Drawing on the gallery’s longstanding expertise, the exhibition unveils the enduring affinities between modern and contemporary practices through gesture, colour, figuration, and volume.

Gesture offers a first lens through which these practices converge. Pierre Soulages's exploration of black: dense, luminous, and pared down to its essential, resonate with the atmospheric gradations of Hans Hartung whose sweeping marks created using brooms and olive branches retain a palpable sense of movement. In both works, tension emerges through the interplay of force and restraint, as the assertiveness of the gesture is tempered by the softness of the coloured ground. Bernar Venet extends this reflection by introducing the indeterminate line: freer, more spontaneous and sinuous, breaking away from the strict rules of geometry, giving rise to forms that appear open, dynamic, and in constant becoming.

Colour introduces a different rhythm. Serge Poliakoff’s compositions, built from interlocking planes of muted yet resonant colour, offer a sense of balance and stillness that contrasts with the dynamic spatial webs of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, where colour and line dissolve conventional perspective. This sensibility extends into three dimensions in the work of Sheila Hicks, who treats fibre as a sculptural medium, animating colour through texture, volume, and movement. In turn, her work finds a compelling echo in Kenia Almaraz Murillo’s practice, which intertwines traditional weaving techniques with contemporary urban references, from carnival embroidery to neon light, unfolding a dimension that is at once traditional and contemporary.

The human figure emerges as another point of dialogue. Jean Dubuffet's character, created at the outset of L’Hourloupe, deploys the cycle’s distinctive palette of red, blue, white, and black while still retaining traces of the Paris Circus period. It sits alongside that of Peter Blake and his Girl with a Disney Tattoo series, which summons the popular imagination and the appropriation of pop-culture icons such as Snow White and Daisy.

The exhibition concludes with an exploration of volume. François Réau’s bronzes retain something of the lightness and precision of his graphite drawings, translating their delicate lines into sculptural form while reflecting on processes of transformation and the passage of time. In Sophie Vari’s work, in marble or bronze, likewise play on the relationships between form and surface, between solid and void. Each sculpture is composed of interlocking, interdependent forms which, together, suggest a fluid movement, heightened by the smooth surface of the materials and by subtle contrasts of shadow and light. Responding to this pursuit of harmony, Yves Dana’s sculptures draw inspiration from the enduring simplicity of ancient Egyptian statuary and Cycladic figures. Emerging as if shaped by the forces of nature or unearthed from the landscape itself, his works embody a quiet balance between monumentality and restraint.