"Men will always get closer to the universe without ever reaching it": it is a quote from the astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan that inspired the 43 artists who responded to the 14th Issy Biennial at the French Playing Card Museum. This assertion, dear to the exhibition curators, Chantal Mennesson and Sophie Deschamps-Causse, led them to propose to apprehend imaginary or real visions, with hybrid and fantastic creatures, in order to discern the invisible. These close crossings between astrology and astrophysics find in Frédérique Jacquemin the vehicle of a singular work: her ceramic figurine, playful and mystical, seems to mix divinatory arcana and trunk idol. Stéphane Erouane Dumas's Yellow Lichen go from the cell to the flower in a single brushstroke, to a cosmogonic beyond where the painting plays with scales. With Brigitte Moreau Serre, this question is also central. For the painter, spirituality infuses her Cosmos with a sense of wonder whose ochre tones give their warmth to her celestial vaults. A whole flora and bestiary - the geography of a secret world, in short - are transported from work to work. In Claire Fanjul's work, these chimeras express their fragility, offering themselves in a vision deposited with ink on the surface of ostrich eggs, ready to hatch. To approach the universe, to rebuild a world: it is a game to which artists like Fabien Verschaere, Ghyslain Bertholon or the duo Parhélie have also lent themselves.

Erwin Orassibé

exhibition's website