“Ton bleu qui prend au vert” by Salomé Fauc
at the Champ des Impossibles, church of Courcerault

Born in 1993, Salomé Fauc graduated from the Beaux-arts de Lyon and cultivates several passions: decorative arts, architecture, art history and plants in all their forms. In the work of this young artist, the plant motif passes from the rank of decoration to that of the main subject, in an approach voluntarily at odds with the teaching she received.  “At the Beaux-Arts, they order you to “forget the beautiful”…”.

With Salomé, the floral or vegetal motif becomes a kind of feminist marker and, deployed in very large format, it leaves the frame of the canvas to conquer the walls, floors and windows. Beyond scale, temporality, luxuriance and the involvement of the body are other central elements of her artistic approach. Mixing the technique of an “all over” drawing* and the installation-performance, his objective is immersion, both for the artist and the visitor:
“I like the swarming of details, the explosion of motifs, the invasion, the abundance. The three pieces conceived during my residency at the Champ des Impossibles in March 2022 were made on pieces of polyester paper (a kind of tracing paper) that I assemble into a large format. The idea is to present them upright, hung from above, like stained glass. The drawing is drawn with a felt pen, on the ground, then I fill it with Indian ink, always in monochrome, even if the background is colored in a blue-green reminiscent of stained glass. The Saint-Pierre de Courcerault Church, which houses my work, lends itself particularly well to the exercise: filled with paintings and frescoes created by the parish priest at the end of the 19th century, it also contains magnificent stained glass windows.”
If Salomé Fauc works mainly with Indian ink, which she applies either with a felt-tip pen or a brush, she does not hesitate to use charcoal or gold leaf. She seeks above all to work the intensity of the blacks and their brilliance engages the spectator to turn around the work to discover all its depth. The drawing is transformed into writing, with a power of abstraction and an abundance that recalls the motifs of Art Nouveau.

The artist worked for a month in residence at Perche en Nocé for the realization of an installation of three monumental works (one of which is very large: over 5 m high).  “The first week, I walked around the countryside around Nocé to find motifs and sources of inspiration. I am personally very committed to ecology, the heart of my work is centered on the return to nature and of course the rehabilitation of the plant motif, often discredited, because too common. The Perche region lends itself perfectly to this quest.

 

The Champ des Impossibles

From its epicenter, the Moulin Blanchard and the commune of Perche-en-Nocé, the Festival of the Field of the Impossible radiates over 70 km of valleys, to present works in exceptional places.
17 sites, most of which are heritage sites, host exhibitions and provide the Southern Perche with a contemporary breath of fresh air, including a beautiful French representation, without forgetting the presentation of artists in residence and other authors residing in this territory rich in creators.
For its third edition, 26 artists are presented for the most part through a solo exhibition or an installation.
In 2022, the main theme of the Festival is the Tree. A unifying theme, it crosses humanity and is found in literature and art history. It is at the center of our environmental concerns, whether it is a subject, raw material, cosa mentale or at the heart of citizen debates, it underpins artistic approaches that respond by their diversity to the desire for openness of the general curator. Christine Ollier proposes through this framework a large panel of contemporary expressions by making resonate creation and exhibition place.