New acquisitions: the Collection keeps growing
Like every year, new artworks were added to the Societe Generale Art Collection before the summer. In keeping with the values leading its expansion since its inception in 1995, eclecticism guided the selection, associating the work of young graduates from the Beaux-Arts de Paris with the realisations of familiar figures whose artworks were suggested by a team of experts. Created by artists from different generations and various backgrounds, the seventeen chosen pieces, by multiplying the approaches and media used, outline a rich and fertile contemporary art scene in tune with current issues.
Initially, the Collection focused on painting: it is still this media favoured by the artists of half of the selection. Colour is the focus for many young artists, whether in bright successive layers for Clédia Fourniau or in sharp brushstrokes and warm hues for Dora Jeridi. In Marine Wallon’s work, landscapes from the whole world flirt with abstraction thanks to a palette inspired by nature, like in Jung-Yeon Min’s, whose pale, organic colours plunge the canvas into oneirism. The human figure is crucial to Nabil El Makhloufi and Julie Polidoro’s paintings, in desaturated colours for the former and bright ones for the latter: Through it, they explore contemporary issues such as the dualities between crowds and individuals and background and chosen culture for Nabil El Makhloufi, and forced displacement of population and global crisis for Julie Polidoro. It is also the case of a familiar name for the Collection, Romain Bernini, in whose work human beings are confronted with other living creatures and their own interior world. Nicolas Sanhes, of whom the Collection already owned a piece as well, uses painting to deepen and enrich his work as a sculptor.
When it comes to graphic arts, the Collection welcomes a new work by Françoise Pétrovitch: an ink wash drawing where one recognizes the unique, ambiguous world of the artist. Ink as well for Valentin van der Meulen: he uses it to introduce the unexpected in his charcoal drawings. As for Joon Yoo, she works with watercolours and felt tips in repetitive and meditative artworks, and Sacha Floch Poliakoff sticks and draws to immortalise and recontextualise her collections of objects, witnesses to her past and her world. In the field of photography, shots by Nicolas Floc’h, whose work is displayed in the “Water and Diamond” exhibition, and Vincent Fournier joined the Collection: both of these artists use their medium as a meeting point for art and science.
Finally, three three-dimensional works expand this selection: Juliette Minchin’s wax sculpture reconciles both stability and transformation, and materiality and spirituality, and Daniel Firman’s, the human figure and the world of objects. Suzanne Husky, at last, whose Nouveau Ministère de l’Agriculture (New Ministry of Agriculture) can be seen in the “Water and Diamond” exhibition as well, is now featured in the permanent Collection with a vast, profuse tapestry exploring the role of migratory birds in the ecosystems they cross.
To visit the Collection > Societe Generale towers, 17 cours Valmy, 92800 Puteaux, from Monday to Friday and from 10:00 to 18:00.
> Book your guided tour online
