Lavoir Vasserot exhibition - Fractures by Anouchka Gerard

Saint-Tropez has been part of Anouchka Gerard's family history since 1973. Her grandparents moved there that year, and she spent every summer there. For her, this place is an intimate memory, an emotional territory to which she remains deeply attached. The artistic history of Saint-Tropez is marked by a figurative, sunny style of painting, attentive to the light of the Mediterranean landscape. Light also occupies an essential place in Anouchka Gerard's work, but it appears differently: revealed in the material, in incisions and transparencies, sometimes as if through stained glass. If light crosses surfaces, the creative process is a more interior exploration, driven by an instinctive, physical gesture. At the heart of her practice are the "paint skins" created by accumulating layers of paint on glass, which are then peeled off. Having become autonomous, these surfaces are incised, scratched and sometimes sewn. The stitching acts like a scar: both a repair and a fragile attempt to hold the whole together, making visible the fractures that run through the material. These pieces are now joined by plaster bas-reliefs, made from engraved molds in which the material is pressed, notched and worked. The accumulation of these interventions transforms surfaces into fragile, almost architectural constructions, where every trace bears the memory of time.