The AOM gallery is pleased to present Antoine de Saboulin's first solo exhibition entitled Odyssey. The exhibition will be held from April 2 to 14, 2024 in Paris at 28 rue Saint-Gilles in the 3rd arrondissement. After more than ten years of artistic direction and illustration, Antoine de Saboulin chose, two years ago, to devote himself to painting.

 

The artist plays with colors, shapes, materials in a universe that oscillates between dream and science fiction. Its plant landscapes are very colorful. Bright light and colors burst into a fantasy vision. They surprise us and respond to the rocks and their more muted tones in which the sand mixed with the paint accentuates the physical relationship with the material. His production of large format canvases is punctuated by smaller ones like these swirling clouds which pose curiously like supernatural creatures suddenly appearing.

 

The influences are multiple: from the impressionists with whom his father, a painter, confronted him from his childhood, to Douanier Rousseau, to Van Gogh, Matisse, and later Hockney. It is also influenced by Basquiat and Rothko. The world of science fiction comics is omnipresent. We see the artist's fascination with Moebius, his fantastic landscapes, and with the world of Alejandro Jodorowsky. French electro, psychedelic rock and all the pop culture of the 90s are never far away. The artist draws in notebooks, invents and composes before transferring his drawing to the canvas with a black marker. He layers his landscapes and then draws from his “reservoir of motifs” to insert small inhabitants. His notebooks are filled with little things from everyday life, carefully collected and then pasted onto notebook pages (packaging labels, photos, drawings by his daughter, quotes, studies, essays and compositions in pencil and colored pencils... ). In this imaginary and singular world where nature is unreal, we perceive a form of optimism and also nostalgia for childhood. Some landscapes are deserted, others reveal exuberant, strange fauna, as if suspended. The artist animates them with the discreet presence of small animals or insects, in a game of hide and seek with his 6-year-old daughter Cassandre who enjoys finding them when she comes to see him work.

 

Antoine also reveals his affinity with ceramics by reproducing lustrous and shiny effects on some of his canvases. He likes to draw inspiration from the work of Julie Bergeron, whom he discovered through his research and whose certain creations find a particular resonance in his work.

 

Spotted last year by Christie's London, he was invited to participate in Christie's Late in December 2023 and became a member of the Taylor Foundation in January 2024.