BRIGITTE NAHON – À LA VIE
October 20 – December 21, 2005

Brigitte Nahon’s third solo exhibition at the gallery will present works meant to embody the artist’s enthusiasm for life. Showing sculptures and works on paper, the artist pursues here the interaction of her familiar mediums and supports initiated at the beginning of her career.



Water, crystal and glass, universal symbols of transparency and purity, are essential mediums in Brigitte Nahon’s creation. As early as 1991, she realizes two sculptures, exhibited at the Musée Carnavalet, in which delicately balanced colored crystal bulbs were placed on top of stainless steel supports. In 1995, “off” from the Venice Biennale she creates a sculpture made of glass bulbs filled with water, reflecting the Canal Grande. In 1999, during Les Champs de la sculpture II in Paris, she became in no time the talk of the town with Le Passage, a monumental sculpture made of two large “waves” in between the visitor wanders around. Today, with the assistance of the Baccarat Manufacture, she presents us Brillance, a monumental unique sculpture (180 x 350 x 350 cm - 71 x 138 x 138 in.), compound mainly of crystal and groisil (bits of broken glass), the symbols of delicacy, yet exuberant and precious beauty of life.

Neighbouring this large translucent sculpture, the small sculptures entitled Origin embody survival and endurance of life. Each of these sculptures is composed of two Baccarat crystal wine glasses, suspended in equilibrium, one on top of the other. Three of them are colored. The complementary colors used (blue, carmine red and pale yellow) are opposed as in a confrontation of two organic worlds. The groisil, inside, also colored in a complementary manner, is the symbol of crystallization, birth and life within life. Two sculptures from the Origin series are thoroughly transparent; they combine when juxtaposed to shape the artist’s fetish figure of an 8, synonymous with infinite and perpetual renewal.

Alive, another monumental sculpture created in situ, is the symbol of life such as nature allows us to contemplate every day. Airplane cables gush forth from the ground, slide through a rope pulley hanging from the ceiling and come down splashing on a mirror-polished stainless steel plate laid on the floor. Translucent crystal pendants are inserted, looking like raindrops. The light reflecting steel plate laid on the ground reminds the viewer of water - the water the plant absorbs in the soil for subsistence; it also allows the water drops and the whole sculpture to be mirrored, just like water in a well.

45 drawings complete the exhibition as transpositions of Brigitte Nahon’s personal experience. Her intimate emotions are here expressed in a very impulsive, physical drawing like in a colorful bunch of flowers. These are visually experienced as emblems of euphoria, as an act of faith in life, remote from the chaos and ugliness of despair. They are all similarly entitled LéHaïm Haïah. The Hebrew word LéHaïm meaning “Homage to life”, and Haïah meaning “living essence”, which in Judaism is the holiest and most equitable part of the soul.

Neither do these drawings - nor the other works in the present exhibition - constitute mere artistic performances. They are “life certificate” and as such embody the individual allegory. In this exhibition, more than ever or anywhere else, does Brigitte Nahon express her inner self and personal feelings, where body and soul converge, as living material and the evidence of human life.
My artistic approach rests on the conviction that we all bear the responsibility in experiencing the world with its unpredictable balance which let the beauty of life appears.

PRESS CONTACT : Emmanuelle de Noirmont
at the gallery :
Tel : +33 (0)1.42.89.89.00 / Fax : +33 (0)1.42.89.89.03 / E-mail : info@denoirmont.com
IMAGES : 300 dpi images available on our website www.denoirmont.com
Contact the gallery to obtain the access codes