Catherine Danou

Catherine Danou presents two series of works on paper linked by a common theme: that of confrontation and avoidance.

In the first series, "Franchissement des bords", imaginary prints are placed on a grid in a deliberately irregular manner, sometimes confined within the frame, but also emerging from the imposed space, thus evoking a possible avoidance. This pattern seems to repeat itself endlessly, always similar and always different like an imaginary book.

From 2019, the artist seeks a new, simpler language, gestural, stripped and perhaps more demanding. The "Between two" series is building up, in which the choices of the artist are manifested by the gesture of tearing followed by the arrangement of papers in a plastic research to confront them with a relationship of balance.

Alain Eludut

Catherine Danou doesn't tick boxes. To get out, to stay in are the vast questions posed by her unfinished grids, covered with prints, writings and indecipherable signs traced by hand or brush. With this index of a priori similar yet different stains, the ex-lawyer overturns the established order. Lokta, her favorite medium, agrees with her: made in the eastern Himalayas, this traditional Nepalese paper conceals strings that she removes or splits, altering the trajectory of these lifelines. Nuance and consistency vary according to the rainy season: snow or coffee, frail or armed, the profile, never standard, guides her "music" played constantly in mute tones. Whether she's tinkering with the reverse, whitening or building the right side, Danou goes for economy, discarding useless gestures to make room for chance. Such is the case with her "coincidences", torn papers hastily assembled according to chords of edges and mismatches of tones. His "folded" range is not colorless: red and mint, blue and yellow form here and there disunited couples whose harmony recalls the scores of Paul Klee and Nicolas de Staël. Elsewhere, the outrenoir of Soulages infuses its wefts, reminiscent of the secret alphabets of Henri Michaux or Pierrette Bloch. For it is in the in-between, where "the eye circulates", freed but everywhere solicited, that the work speaks. Or more precisely, "murmurs".

Virginie Huet