GENEVA.- Philippe Lardy is a Swiss artist who has returned to his home country after a career as an illustrator in the United States and France. He will be exhibiting his works in Espace Muraille’s gallery from 7 October to 17 December 2016. Life Forms seeks to reconnect with the creativity of childhood – a world of play incorporating chance, accident and free interpretation. More than thirty works, mostly recent paintings, have been created using a variety of media, shapes and colours. Visitors will be transported to the heart of a universe of symbolism in perpetual evolution.

Caroline and Eric Freymond, creators of Espace Muraille, have given the Genevan artist free rein: ‘We have long followed Philippe Lardy’s work and he is an artist we have truly fallen in love with. There’s something remarkable about his unusual career, particularly the way he has made the transition from illustration to painting. He’s moved away from the narrative aspect of his drawings in order to connect with a freer form of art, one that’s charged with symbolism.’ Captivated by the ‘vital forms’ of his twisted paper shapes, the couple had already put together an exhibition entitled Life Forms in Paris in 2012. This new exhibition at Espace Muraille, bearing the same title, traces the development of an introspective journey that began here many years ago.

Inspired by Scandinavian legends and fairytales, where the boundaries between the subterranean and the celestial are often blurred, Philippe Lardy has made a close study of the world of dreams, and here explores the dreamlike nature of archetypes. For this exhibition, he has thrown himself into a game of free interpretation, taking as its starting point a twisted piece of paper – the inspiration for these paintings, drawings and sculptures. Tiny component parts of this prototype are then enlarged. These vital forms or ‘microforms’, alluded to in the title of the exhibition, ‘appear in the folds of these strips of paper, like chains symbolizing the DNA that transmits life from generation to generation’. Life Forms conveys the idea of progress in art and its capacity to evolve or disintegrate in history.

Life Forms: a tour through Espace Muraille
Espace Muraille has inspired Philippe Lardy: ‘The layout of the gallery – with its vast, luminous first level, followed by this descent underground, gives one the sensation of a progression towards a mysterious secret, like some kind of mystical journey.’ What is more, for the artist, the works are often produced at the expense of a ‘descent into hell’ of sorts. Conscience and intuition, loss of bearings and equilibrium… When the image is finally revealed, an unexpected space, a new symbolism, has taken over.

In a formal sense, Life Forms, with these intertwined shapes, is searching for the boundary, the tipping point, between solid forms and the third dimension. Transparency or solidity, depth or surface, forwards or backwards… These strips of twisted paper are at once a concrete and a symbolic subject. Each model is one component part in a chain of motifs, but can also create a new chain by combining with another module: a way of imagining life that regenerates itself spontaneously.

The works have been created using a vast range of different materials – oil on wood, acrylic, casein paint on cardboard, graphite, patchwork or even paper rolled on wood – whose intrinsic qualities have been reappropriated and developed by Philippe Lardy. Among the works exhibited here, the ‘microforms’ of Life Form 10 (acrylic and graphite on paper, 90 x 120cm, 2015) intertwine in the style of a double helix in a DNA chain until they form a kind of swirl in blue and beige tones on a blue background. Life Shape 3 (casein and acrylic on rolled paper, 74 x 83, 2015), proves startling in its own way through the way it harmonically fuses blues and whites on a beige background. Philippe Lardy says ‘The work that best represents me right now is the one I find most elusive, in its technique and its aspect. It might well inspire a series of works in the future. Life Form 3 (casein, graphite and coloured pencils on rolled paper, 178 x 92, 2016) is part animal: half pencil, half insect. It was created using red and blue coloured pencil and graphite on prepared paper.’

Numerous paintings such as Life Work 10 (acrylic on wood, 110 x 60, 2016) and Life Work 11 (rolled paper on wood, 140 x 80) were inspired by a very distinctive kind of traditional paper: bituminized paper. This involves waxed paper containing a fine layer of bitumen at the centre as well as a network of threads. Developed before the use of plastic, it offered ideal waterproof qualities and conditions of durability. By peeling off layers of paper, the bitumen could be revealed, with the outline of the criss-crossed threads forming the structure of the surface. The creative possibilities were multiplied.