LIONEL ESTÈVE: FOCUS: UN HIVER À ATHÈNES

Perrotin Paris is pleased to introduce Focus: Un Hiver à Athènes, by Lionel Estève.

November 28, 2024 – February 1, 2025

The inaugural Focus exhibition is a poetic series by Lionel Estève entitled Un Hiver à Athènes (A Winter in Athens). Using delicate embroidery on pieces of white silk, the artist documents his wanderings through Athens, capturing fleeting impressions of the city's landscapes, textures, and rhythms.

Estève had a large scrap of natural silk organza left over at the studio from a previous project. Its lightness, suppleness, and transparency were attractive, and he hoped it might become the beginning of something. It was an intuition, like so many others while you're working. So he asked Hossein, his tailor neighbor, to make some kind of prototype, like a silk scarf. Estève was amazed at the delicacy of what he came up with. It was a small transparent scarf, more or less rectangular, hemmed at the edges, a little wavy, a sort of lazy line. It wasn't clumsy, either. Nothing was faked or contrived. This single piece of silk seemed to convey so much softness and finesse, like something perfect waiting for a gesture.

The challenge was to make that gesture without upsetting the balance or weighing anything down to maintain the initial sensitivity. He almost had to be discreet. He decided to lay some colored thread over it, letting it run, just pricking it from time to time to attach it. This process seemed both sufficient and just. Estève was also attracted by the idea of producing a work that could be part of everyday life and travel with him. He could afford to travel while working, escaping the dreary Brussels winter. A friend let him stay in an apartment in Athens with a lovely view and a small table where he could do his embroidery. He took many "scarves" with him, like so many blank pages.

The similarity of the motifs, the colors, and the techniques seemed to confirm his intentions. It made him think of Béla Bartók composing his six Romanian dances. Like him, Estève had repurposed all this traditional and folkloric material. He had also reinterpreted the light and the urban energy. This made Estève feel close to him.