MARGUERITE PIARD
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PARIS-B is delighted to welcome within its PB Project, Marguerite Piard, for her solo show entitled « Sang-froid », unveiling her latest paintings.
« Represented together, in embracing positions, they are lovers, sisters, friends. They support each other, know each other’s respective secrets. It is necessary to offer other representations of women together than those fantasized by men for men. »
— Marguerite Piard
Marguerite Piard’s painting is a matter of temperatures. Her palette stretches at both ends towards deep reds and midnight blues, summoning, beyond a certain symbolism (fire/water; blood/night), the thermodynamic sensations produced by particular phenomena. One feels torsos creased by naps and fingers wrinkling at the touch of water. So, one must seek coolness, wrap oneself in her body like a towel after a bath; or melt like sugar, the skin syrupy with sunlight.
In the Encyclopedia, Diderot establishes a distinction between « to absorb » and « to engulf »: absorption begins on one part, extends and quickly destroys; engulfment envelops and carries away. Thus, one would say that fire absorbs but water engulfs.
Marguerite Piard’s pictorial motifs fully participate in this emotion drawn inward, which consumes or holds back, like tears stopped by lashes.
« The skin envelops the inner self, protecting but also hiding.
These are notions I hold dear. »
– Marguerite Piard
« I’m looking for a gripping effect with, for example, the recurring motif of hands. By depicting them intertwined, I aim to provoke sensations, memories and even carnal desires in the viewer. » – Marguerite Piard
The body is swallowed in the moment, and the suspended emotions take the form of a silent and trembling intoxication. Each moment flows without a jolt, without a sound, in a calm and assured rhythm. The hypnagogic state close to lethargy that covers each scene gives certain figures a character of recumbent effigy, as if changed by ecstasy into salt statues. This inaction renders the paintings ambiguous: a caress can be both a burn and an ointment.
In Marguerite Piard’s work, mundane gestures become an open language where one can read signs of both faith and eroticism: do the two raised fingers relate to blessing or masturbation? […] The weight of a religious education that reprimands a woman’s desire is replaced here by the concentration of pleasure in the female body, contracted, suave, and golden. Everything condenses in it like beads of sweat on a forehead.
« The fact that the skin is uncovered, bare and zoomed in, in no way alters the anonymity of the silhouettes. An anonymity that aims at inclusivity, reappropriation and representation of women’s bodies. »
— Marguerite Piard for Konbini
This tension is also facilitated by the specific technique used: Marguerite Piard does not wait for the paint to dry to apply a second layer that will pull the first. The result is marbled and sometimes granulated texture effects, like a dried plain trembling with pleasure at the arrival of rain. This painting, visually close to encaustic, further encloses the body upon itself; it encases it like a liquid that two palms attempt to contain.
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« Before being naked, the bodies of my characters are first and foremost feminine. The goal of my paintings is to talk about my relationship with the body. »
– Marguerite Piard
Catalogue of Works
Marguerite Piard, Les épaules salées, 2024, oil on wooden panel, 8,2 x 9,9 cm
Marguerite Piard, L'empreinte, 2024, oil on carved wood, 15 x 10 x 25 cm
Marguerite Piard, Nous laverons nos membres fatigués, 2024, oil on oak wood panel, 65 x 54 cm
Marguerite Piard, La main protectrice II, 2023, oil on carved wood, 8,5 x 13 cm
Marguerite Piard, Les Onctions, 2024, oil on wooden panel, 23 x 15 x 4 cm
Marguerite Piard, La Crique rose, 2024, oil on carved wood, 35 x 25 x 2,5 cm
Marguerite Piard, Bain osmose, 2024, oil on wood, 7 x 8 cm
Marguerite Piard, Dreaming never felt so bad, 2024, oil on canvas, 12 x 21,5 x 3
Marguerite Piard, La Troisième ombre, 2023, oil on wood, 6 x 10 cm
Marguerite Piard, How can I sleep when love is waking?, 2024, oil and arcrylic on canvas, 122 x 160 x 2 cm
Marguerite Piard, Sarramauca, 2024, oil on canvas, 114 x 162 cm
Marguerite Piard, How can I sleep when love is waking ?, 2024, oil and arcrylic on canvas, 122 x 160 x 2 cm
Marguerite Piard, La Communion insulaire, 2023, oil on carved wood, 22 x 16,5 cm
Marguerite Piard, La Lanterne, 2024, oil on wooden panel, 7 x 5 cm
Marguerite Piard, La Roche brûlante, 2024, oil on wooden panel, 50 x 40 cm
Marguerite Piard, born in 1996 in Rueil-Malmaison, France, graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2020. In December 2023, she presented ‘La Folle Allure’, her second solo exhibition at Château La Coste, curated by Margaux Plessy. She has recently participated in group exhibitions in Munich, New York, and Brussels. She is currently working in Montreuil, as part of the Atelier Œ collective.