Emerge

Gaëlle Wagner finds her artistic identity in abstract painting. She gives way to the nature of a flow, a movement or an impulse rather than the representation of the real world. "My painting does not impose a way of looking. Wagner's work revolves around research into colour and the dynamics of light in pictorial construction, and is resolutely oriented towards abstract expressionism. It is above all the impulsive gesture, not systematically intellectualised, that guides her towards the canvas, through a vibrant explosion of colour. Combining technical skill and freedom, her work is a place where premeditation and improvisation, time and space, support and gesture confront each other. "The meanings attributed to my painting come and go, and I want it to be a moment of questioning and meditation. Wagner's painting finds its balance not only in chance and spontaneity, but also in a reflection on the mastery of shapes and colours. Most of her paintings are large-scale, and combine a variety of techniques (paint, spray can, collage, felt-tip pen or Posca drawing) and media (medium, concrete, polystyrene, Canson). She creates series of paintings on wood, polystyrene or concrete that are coherent and resonant with each other.

Gaëlle Wagner was born in 1984 in a working-class suburb of Strasbourg. Inspired by her urban surroundings, she developed a passion for painting and photography at a very early age. A genuinely self-taught artist, she pursued her creative approach in her teens, attending evening classes at the Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg and the ESAD in Orléans. Gaëlle Wagner has been based in Orléans since 2011, and has resolutely focused on a style of painting characterised by the power of colour. She has already held a number of exhibitions in Strasbourg, at Galerie 9 in Nancy, at the Galerie du Ministère de l'Économie et des Finances in Paris, and in the Centre Val de Loire region, notably at the Galerie du Château in Saran, and more recently in 2019 and 2022 at XUL, the contemporary art fair at 108 rue de Bourgogne, and in 2020 at the Galerie de l'Hôtel de Ville in Blois. Her work is also exhibited online on the Artsper website.

Fascinated by internationally renowned artists such as Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell and Jonone, Wagner draws her inspiration from their creative energy, oscillating between total freedom and control. Working mainly flat on the floor, the artist mixes gradations of colour with a spray or roller, and sprays of paint sown endlessly on canvas. Following his performance, the painting reveals its intensity when it leaves the floor to take on its meaning and dimension in a vertical position, revealing its contrasts, its materials and the dynamics of the painted movements. Wagner's painting represents it as it is, frank, direct, passionate and obstinate, in the service of life. Combining strength and precision, through the use of harmonious colours, this young artist puts herself at the service of the search for pictorial harmony.