This autumn, MO.CO. (Montpellier Contemporain) Panacée welcomes French artist Laura Garcia Karras for her first solo exhibition in a public institution.
“Laura Garcia Karras is dedicated to just one medium: painting, which she stretches, deconstructs and sculpts, questioning its own materiality.”
Laura Garcia Karras – PERENNIAL, Exhibition views, MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain, Production MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain, ©Adagp, Paris, 2024
“In her representations of elements of nature, essentially flowers, the artist proposes different levels of interpretation. In her canvases, she goes beyond their poetic language and invokes their symbolism of fragility and eternity, transcending their sensuality and carnality.”
“This show is an opportunity for the artist to explore her medium in a new way, exploding and consuming the motifs and bringing out the juices. Laura Garcia-Karras takes us on a journey wandering through gardens and into the abyss.”
— Presse release of the exhibition PERENNIAL, MO.CO., Montpellier
“The subject of my work? It’s painting, there are no other subjects. Naturally, I use elements that inspire me.
They can take different forms: music, a situation, a memory, a proclivity…
all of which move from the real to the imaginary.”
— Laura Garica Karras
Laura Garcia Karras – PERENNIAL, Exhibition views, MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain, Production MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain, ©Adagp, Paris, 2024
“In a moment of deep concentration, Laura Garcia Karras isolates each area to work on it as closely as possible. With the tip of her tool, she slowly caresses the oily material which tolerates no hesitation, no repentance. The shreds of paint then reveal their fibers, their raw flesh in a perfectly smooth, scratched composition. The paint areas never mix; each fragment divides into distinct fractals. Yet, their union forges a sudden symphony, an almost fateful crescendo, like an atomic explosion.” — Anne-Laure Peressin
“In the laboratory of her studio, Laura Garcia Karras sculpts the material with a scalpel and stretches paint with surgical precision. On canvases previously sketched out and then coated with wash, the chromatic palette ranges from light to dark, with gradations from sulfur to orange, passing through caramelized and spicy notes. No brushstrokes are visible, only the cut-outs of the shapes before coloring give a glimpse of the artist’s gestures.”
“The sun’s glare opens the rosebuds by scalpel, slicing through the bulging flesh, cellulosic pulp, chloroplastic surgery, botanical stupor. The light, per its fiery rays, carve through these enrapturing beauties of heady essences.
Flowers blossom in the sun, and the sun makes flowers bloom.”
— “Les filles du feu” by Marie-Sarah Adenis
Laura Garcia Karras – Honneur, 2024. Oil on canvas. With support of Maison Marin. Production MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain, ©Adagp, Paris, 2024
Laura Garcia Karras (b.1988, Les Lilas, France) graduated from La Cambre, Brussels and then the Beaux-Arts de Paris. In 2018, she was the winner of the Concours Fondation Crédit Agricole in France and she won the third place of the Prix Antoine Marin, presented by Bernard Frize. She is now artist resident in the Poush Manifesto in Aubervilliers, France.
