The Lou Carter art gallery is currently offering a double exhibition in its immersive space in the rue des Saints-Pères, Paris 7ème. A double exhibition bringing together the artists Helene Durdilly and Marina Declarey – the first, a spiritual painter all in texture and graphic lines; the second, offering a purified vision close to the black romanticism of interior design…

Meeting with the gallery Lou Carter.

Your art gallery is an intimate space, close to a cabinet of curiosities. Tell us a little about Lou Carter’s selection?

The settings that introduce the artists I represent are very intimate, narrative and even – for some visitors – under-lit (!). That’s why I talk about collections more than group exhibitions.
The gallery is a complete black box. This is a curatorial choice. First of all, because it allows us to anchor ourselves in a sort of confidentiality, a sort of more direct projection of the work for the buyer. An intimacy for the visitor, too.

Finally, I present it as in an almost “privatized” space.

I use the sophistication of the gallery in an apartment, but in my context: on the courtyard, discrete, improbable, confidential.
Also plays the versatility of the artists who are exposed. Here a painter in dialogue with the object of exception of a designer, there jewelry, a sculptor, a photographer also for the collections to come…

This tiny course presents different talents on a small surface which makes it a kind of showcase.

Each collection is conceived so that the artists meet either in their process, their techniques, their aesthetic correspondences also sometimes, the excellence of their know-how always.

An art gallery for a dialogue between the arts.
What would you like visitors and collectors to remember about their visit?

It’s funny to say to make dialogue the arts because in my opinion an art gallery, a museum or any kind of exhibition place is the domain of dialogue with the art in general, no?
Each of us offers this very dialogue, between the creator and the visitor.

What we remember? A narrative experience. At least I hope so.
For my personal stake is to show the imperative of the context for the work.
A sort of destitution of its economic value in favor of its history perhaps. How, a work of art or an object of art takes all its dimension, its brightness when it discusses with its environment. This obviously applies to private space. This can range from personal items to the color of a wall etc…
It’s a bit like clothing in the end. There’s nothing sadder than a couture suit matched with the same designer’s shirt. What counts are the assemblies, their common dialogue; a faded t-shirt flatters the high-end piece. The whole becomes more refined.
Here, it’s a bit the same but with different talents, different specialties gathered. Hence, the sets are designed with everyday or obsolete objects.

Have you thought of developing this project elsewhere than in a gallery? Or at the service of collectors by
example?

This is where the issue is yes.
I have already had the opportunity to develop this relationship with a private collection.
Today it is a real challenge to imagine it for hotels or in collaboration with interior designers, publishing houses for example.
We are currently designing this apartment configuration with designer and craft entrepreneur Pierre-Yves Guenec based between New York and Paris. The idea is to develop a kind of periodic collection dinner where the art object composes the essential of the decor. What I had proposed for the opening of the gallery in 2019, before the epidemic.
It would be a way to increase the visibility of my artists while gathering a selection of sharp and excellent know-how; where, with Pierre-Yves Guenec precisely, our respective networks operate.

Through my collections, which are growing with time, I would like to have the chance to have a finer and finer narrative between the artists, more and more refined and complete.
Develop an expertise by presenting talented creators, targeted on specific geographical areas, and more and more refined themes.

The current exhibition is a double exhibition dedicated to the artists Hélène Durdilly and Marina Declarey. On the one hand painting and on the other design… finally separating the two disciplines makes little sense? How did the meeting between these two artistic worlds come about?

The current exhibition actually presents five creators. Around Hélène Durdilly & Marina Declarey.
The sculptor Victor Guedy that I exhibited on the previous edition and with whom I develop notably pieces of jewelry in limited edition. The designer CARM that I will exhibit in spring 2023 and Jean- François Hallier on a series of lamps.

Around them, because they are the center of this collection.
Hélène Durdilly is an abstract painter who began her career in the 1970s. She captivated me by the absolute modesty of the subject of her paintings, a form of snapshots, nostalgic. Marina Declarey is a designer edited by the house of excellence Brimbois, directed by Guillaume Chevalier.
His woodwork is as sensitive as it is brutal.

On each collection, I look for a point of convergence between the artists, it is inherent to my way of working the space as much as to develop a circumstantial narration. And these two artists met on an obvious point: the skin. In her way of apprehending the canvases, of incising them for Hélène Durdilly and the requirement of the finishes of Marina Declarey which gives to wood a leather texture.

As soon as we talk about collection it doesn’t really make sense to separate the disciplines anymore. Both revealing themselves at the strongest point of their process.

What is your relationship with the work and posture of the master of the otherworldly who has just left us?

It is especially the way of approaching light in space that inspires me in Soulages. It should be noted that before becoming a gallery owner, I had a career as a dancer, which I had to end abruptly due to an injury.
I have kept certain founding principles, notably in my way of apprehending the exhibition space today – which is naturally influenced by the black box that is the stage.

With the master, I share the same conviction for the revealing power of black. I also see in it a transparency, an ability to intensify the details. As the movement is on stage finally. I was asked by one of my collectors to paint the same glossy black as the one in the gallery for a work he had just acquired. I have since stocked up on them (!)

More seriously, there is this optical relationship that fascinates me and that is not found in white. Black isolates. And in my opinion it reveals a work of art. Its material and light. I pay close attention to the light. Almost maniacal.

At Icon-Icon we love the little personal stories that mark and inspire… Do you have an iconic moment, an encounter with an iconic work or artist that still accompanies you today in your work as a gallery owner?

It is not so much an artist or a work of art that accompanies me on a daily basis.
Rather, it would be a singular figure in the history of art – those exceptional flowers that grew on a pile of manure.

They can be of great help to me: complacent in times of doubt, driving in times of overwhelm. Naturally, I would mention Peggy Guggenheim.
This woman is a figure who calms me as much as she inspires me. Soothes me with a smoky family story, inspires me by the fact that she knew how to defy her great sensitivity, her omnipresent doubt surely, to turn it into a talent. One expertise, one eye.

Intuition, the strength to believe infallibly in what she perceived in the artist, to affirm it at that time, are for me the essential qualities of the profession of gallery owner.

We could also mention Gabrielle Chanel. And even spend hours there…

What are the upcoming events?

The current exhibition will end on January 18th.
Invited by Métiers Rares, I will then accompany Marina Declarey on the Objets Sensuels event, which will take place at Le Meurice during fashion week – from January 23rd to 27th.
This event is a beautiful project around the crafts and luxury, deployed in a sensual journey where the senses are at the heart of the scenography designed by Pierre-Yves Guenec.

We will then reopen the gallery on January 26th, to present the exceptional work of the Anglo-Spanish portraitist Lucie Geffré in a setting with Victorian colors.