Intermittences at the Alliance Française de Glasgow

L’Alliance Française de Glasgow is delighted to present INTERMITTENCES, a selection of paintings by Glasgow-based artist Nadège Druzkowski, freely inspired by the work of French writer, Marcel Proust. The exhibition runs from 4-28 March 2014 and coincides with La Fête de la Francophonie, which each year celebrates all aspects of the French language around the world. As part of this event, a special reading by French poet Béatrice Brérot will take place on Thursday 20th March at 7pm.

The title for this show was inspired by ‘Les Intermittences du Coeur’, a title Marcel Proust himself initially chose for his novel ‘In Search of Lost Time’ before a last minute change of mind in 1913. The paintings, echoing Proust’s world, are also inspired by the sophisticated, chic aesthetic of ‘Last Year of Marienbad’, a film by Alain Resnais. Like Proust’s novel, it is set in high society and consciously breaks up the traditional linear narrative. It recounts the story of a man attempting to convince a woman that they had an affair the year before. Reality; memory; fiction - the viewer is quickly lost in a labyrinth of time, neither linear nor continuous, but distorted between a dream world and reality. This fragmentation is further emphasised through the use of images from the artist’s personal collection.

Plunging into a well of intimate thoughts, the paintings invite the viewer to wander in an imaginary space; a mosaic made up of dreams intermingled with invented, reconstructed and remembered facts. The patterns are deliberately recurring, a repeating motif that emerges and evolves. The format of the paintings is somewhat reminiscent of cinema. It reinforces a confusion between reality and illusion, while the surreal colour palette pulls the viewer into this dream-like world, as portrayed in ‘In Search of Lost Time’.

For this show Nadège Druzkowski has collaborated with Béatrice Brérot, a French poet based in Lyon. Meetings, discussions, and a shared literature review have nourished their mutual reflection. The principal poem depil fin fond is a direct echo from the paintings. Béatrice Brérot drew from her own memory process to design this piece that evokes imaginary gardens, theatres and memory palaces. The listener is conveyed to a mental space where the corridors of time end up merging, inviting one to a timeless hypnotic wandering. 

Nadège Druzkowski is a visual artist based between Lyon and Glasgow. Investigating concepts of time, memory and absence, she is particularly interested in how memories blur the line between past and present and allow us to embark, at times, on mental time travel. Time and space cease being one single reality. It becomes something more complex, heterogeneous. Reality gradually transforms into fiction.

www.ndart.fr

Béatrice Brérot is a poet and a librarian. Her work revolves around the perceptible and dynamic reality of signs, letters and words that she explores through their visual and sound dimensions. She is a founder of Laps / le suc & l’absynthe, a member of the collective Le syndicat des poètes qui vont mourir un jour and hosts les Jeux dits de la poésie.

www.beatricebrerot.over-blog.net

ADDRESS: Alliance Française de Glasgow - 3 Park Circus – Glasgow G3 6AX

OPENING TIMES: Monday to Thursday: 9.30am - 8pm, Friday: 9.30am - 4pm, Saturday: 9.30am – 1.30pm

CONTACT DETAILS: Tel. +44 (0)141 331 4080 – Email: culture@afglasgow.org.uk 

www.afglasgow.org.uk