In Situ Fabienne Leclerc is honoring Damien Deroubaix on the occasion of the opening of its first double programming and 10 years of collaboration with the artist.

The gallery, now located in the Marais, also occasionally invests temporary venues. This first event will be held in the Rouart studio in the 16th arrondissement, Berthe Morisot’s former studio, which has been a home as well as a place for artistic exchanges since the 1930s.

“Time goes on,” in the Le Marais space, mostly presents oil paintings. The title is linked to a cycle of recent works in which vanities, death, the hybridization of chthonian and celestial creatures meet.

 “Furies,” the project especially designed for the Rouart studio, features monumental painting accompanied by the many sketches that enriched its final form. It is both the work and its “behind the scenes” that are revealed here.

Damien Deroubaix is an artist who probes the themes of death, vanity and the invisible through a body of work that is based on the practice of hybridization and increased attention to other cultures as well as the artists who have been authentic visionaries.

From the chthonian to the Uranian, Damien Deroubaix’s works dip into a dark, cosmic repertory, summoning Mesopotamian deities as well as the path of stars, by way of alchemy. In an ongoing dialogue with old masters such as Hieronymous Bosch, Goya or Picasso (with whom he will exhibit at the end of October at the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence), his approach to the imaginary and the phantasmagorical is inspired by them without falling into simple repetition. This presence of the dream world goes hand in hand with an imagery close to our reality: that of wars and mass murders perpetuated throughout the 20th century, that of the balance of power between today’s economic heavyweights. For Damien Deroubaix, painting is revelatory, and his work consists in scratching the surface of society.

Born in 1972, Damien Deroubaix lives and works in Meisenthal. He studied in Saint-Etienne and Karlsruhe (Germany). Since 2003, his work has been exhibited in the best European institutions and has been the object of many solo shows, particularly in Switzerland and Germany. He has spent long periods abroad, notably during residences at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2005) and ISCP in New York (2008). In 2009, he was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp. His works are in the most important French collections – Musée d'art Moderne Centre Pompidou, Paris, MAMC, Strasbourg, the FRACs Midi-Pyrénées, Limousin and Basse Normandie, FNAC CNAP, Musée du dessin et de l’estampe originale de Gravelines, Musée régional de l'Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d'Olonne, and in international collections, among them, those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Mudam, Luxembourg, Saarlandmuseum, Saarbrucken, Museu Coleçao Berardo, Lisbon, Albrecht-Dürer-Haus-Stiftung, Nuremberg, Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen...