CMS Collection founded by Joanna Chevalier, Hervé Mikaeloff and François Sarkozy, is a joint collection and platform to support contemporary artistic creation.
On October 15, CMS Collection X Laffanour/Galerie Downtown Paris will hold at Le Molière, in collaboration, an exhibition bringing together contemporary art and design.
Artists that CMS Collection will highlight, though each having their unique trajectory and artistic perspective, where colour, perception and perseverance shine through and sits within the art, a common thread some of the artists such as Albraehe and Dodinh have, is the experience of war, refuge or exile, which is breathed into their work.
Anas Albraehe, Marcella Barceló, Nabil Nahas, Huong Dodinh, and Yunyao Zhang's paintings will embrace the walls of the gallery in Paris during Paris + by Art Basel, where a sensitivity for colour or tone, a fusion of influences and experiences, are immersed within each artwork.
Sculptural pieces by the designers Ron Arad, Gae Aulenti, Choï Byung Hoon, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, José Zanine Caldas, Sori Yana and Isamu Noguchi, will be presented by Laffanour/ Galerie Downtown, a gallery which specializes in furniture by 20th and 21st century architects and designers.
Art and design will interact in dialogue with each other around the gallery space, shape, form and brushstrokes will speak the language of art and humanity; below are some of the works of art.
ANAS ALBRAEHE
Born in Syria, Soueida, in 1991. Anas Albraehe is a Beirut-based artist who primarily works in paintings and performative theater. He received a bachelor’s degree in painting and drawing in 2014 from the Fine Arts University of Damascus, Syria. After the onset of war in his native country, he relocated to Lebanon and obtained an MA in Psychology and Art Therapy in 2015 from the Lebanese University.
MARCELLA BARCELÓ
Barceló's work has been presented in numerous exhibitions in France and abroad. She participated in the Biennale de Dessin Contemporain de Paris in 2014 and received the Prix du Dessin Contemporain des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2015. Her works can be found in the collections of the Xiao Museum (China), Museum of Contemporary Art of Ibiza (Spain), Cabinet de Dessin des Beaux-Arts de Paris (France), Fondation Guerlain (France), Fonds de Dotation Emerige (France) among others.
HUONG DODINH
Huong Dodinh was born in 1945 in Soc Trang, in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Dodinh and her family were forced to flee their war torn home in 1953 and sought refuge in Paris, where the artist continues to live and work today. At a boarding school in Rambouillet, Dodinh witnessed snow for the first time, marvelling at the blending of land and sky. She calls this luminescent scene her artistic “epiphany” and it continues to inspire her painting. Dodinh studied at the prestigious Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1965 to 1969, completing courses in a wide array of disciplines including engraving, lithography, frescoes, painting and architecture. During this time, Dodinh was deeply affected by the violence of the Vietnam War and the uprisings of May 1968. Dodinh is the recipient of several important awards and distinctions including, 1st Prize at the International Grand Prize for Painting in Cannes (1981), the Silver Cross of Merit and French Dedication (1996), and the Vice President Maison de la Culture d'Asie Orientale (1997). She presented a solo exhibition in 2021 at the Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet, and has participated in group presentations at FRAC de Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, as well as the major contemporary art exhibition Triptyque in Angers.
NABIL NAHAS
Born in Beirut in 1949, Nabil Nahas earned his M.F.A. at Yale University in 1972, and divides his time between New York and Beirut. One of his most recent solo museum exhibition was “Perpetual Energy” at the Beirut Exhibition Center in Beirut, Lebanon (2010). Nahas represented Lebanon in the 25th Biennale of São Paulo in Brazil (2002), and his work was included in “Glasstress 2011,” a Collateral Event of the 54th Venice Biennale, and in “Glasstress: New York” at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York (2012). Nahas had his first solo show at Robert Miller in 1977 and subsequent exhibitions at Holly Solomon in the eighties and Sperone Westwater through the nineties. Nabil Nahas’ work is in museum collections, including: Tate Modern, London; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint Michigan; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; and the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick; Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
YUNYAO ZANG
ZHANG Yunyao (b. 1985) graduated from the Department of Oil Painting, Academy of Fine Arts at Shanghai Normal University (2007). By incorporating felt as the support for the medium of painting, he attempts to explore the unfixed meaning of emotions and desires. His works have been widely exhibited in different institutions, including Qingdao Art Museum (Qingdao, 2021), Zeno X Gallery (Belgium, 2021), Musée Fenaille (France, 2021), Watou Arts Festival (Watou, Belgium, 2021), chi K11 art museum (Shanghai, 2016), CAFA Art Museum (Beijing, 2015), Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai (Shanghai, 2013), etc. His solo exhibitions include “Extasy” (Qiao Sapce, Shanghai, 2019), “Skin Gesture Body” (Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2017), “Nec Spe, Nec Metu” (Perrotin, Hong Kong, 2017), “After Evensong” (Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2015), “Touch Point” (01100001 Gallery, Beijing, 2013), “Mirage” (Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2013), “Paradbox” (Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2011), etc.
Laffanour/Galerie Downtown Paris presents:
CHOÏ BYUNG-HO, BANC AFTERIMAGE 08-303, 2008
RON ARAD, ROVER CHAIR DOUBLE, 1981
PUCCI DE ROSSI, PORTE-MANTEAU « SATYRICON », 2011
CMS CollecTIon X Laffanour/Galerie Downtown Paris
15th to 22nd octobre 2023
Le Molière, 40 rue de Richelieu, Paris 1er
CMS COLLECTION: Joanna Chevalier, Hervé Mikaeloff, François Sarkozy @art_cmscollection , photo © Copyright Jules Monnier
François Laffanour galeriedowntown.com @laffanour_galeriedowntown , photo © DEPASQUALE+MAFFINI – © COPYRIGHT AUCTIONSPRESS