PARIS.- Michel Rein is presenting Edgar Sarin’s fifth solo exhibition in the gallery: Nouvelles œuvres. This exhibition brings together new works created over the last two years, in the context of exhibitions such as Objectif: société (Variations Goldberg) at the Grand Café in Saint Nazaire and his latest solo show, Hunky Dory, which opened two weeks ago at the invitation of the Collection Lambert at Vague Kobe in Japan.

Edgar Sarin has been working for over a decade on new exhibition models, in the ambition to create a space for discovery with heuristic potential. In 2015 he founded his first research group around this matter, Le Cercle de La Horla, which in 2020 would become La Méditerranée.

Over the years, Edgar Sarin has developed a somewhat unique working strategy, building up a spectacularly organic and natural body of work: « I feel that each new work is potentially a new burden that risks “defining my practice”, which I find terrifying in a way, because it would be so counterproductive. So I tend to consider a new artwork through the spectrum of an “escape” with regard to the little heritage that has built up over all these years in my studio and at my shows. This escape represents progress for me. Beuys said that art is the science of freedom, and I really want to believe that. »

Nouvelles œuvres proposes a range of forms and techniques specific to the artist, where paintings and sculptures are born from the same movement, that is « a mechanism that is very close to life. [...] It’s thus a natural programme, and the idea is to take the context into consideration so that there’s a porosity between my gesture and the context. ».

In this context of climate catastrophe and the collapse of biodiversity, Edgar Sarin takes the side of artists such as Pasolini in his dynamic of construction through processes of survival, also posing the question of reconstruction, of the aftermath. This reflection has in fact led him to reconsider the relationship between the artwork and the onlooker, stating that « the point is to consider the viewer from the point at which he stops being one », thus opening the way towards a collective construction.

The artist’s first monograph, edited by Mathilde de Croix is published by Manuella Éditions, and presented to coincide with the opening of the exhibition. It brings together four years of work, with texts by Mathilde de Croix, Donatien Grau, Anna Millers, Jean-Marie Gallais, Colin Ledoux, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Éric de Chassey and Mouna Mekouar.

In 2023, two of the artist’s works joined the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne. In June, the artist will unveil his first monumental bronze, presented as part of Un Été au Havre (curated by Gaêl Charbau). This work will remain a permanent installation in Auguste Perret’s city.


*Quotes from the artist, taken from his interview with Mathilde de Croix, at the oepning of his monograph.