Notice by Pierre Gentès, Galerie 75 Rouen:
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Aurore Levasseur is a painter.
Tenacious, stubborn, brazen and tender, Aurore Levasseur, an expert navigator, avoided the pitfalls and stumbles of the new academicism which wants painting to be dead. Without scruples, but with determination, she stepped into the shoes of tradition, plunging her gaze and her soul into the verticality of the profession which wanted one day to question representation and its necessity.
Aurore knows how to paint, she learned it by seeking from those who knew what to support her ambition.
Aurore looks at herself and talks to herself. His brush is his voice, his canvases a monologue. She feels herself, caresses herself, gazes at herself to describe herself, know herself and recognize herself. She walks deep into her representations without mocking ironies. A little mockingly, she takes each other by the arm and, by taking care of the shadows, the drapes and the frame, she invites herself into a tomorrow with new lights and other views.
The painter speaks to his canvas, the canvas responds to him, and presses him, and asks him why you gave birth to me, and the painter responds that it is she who invents it and not he who creates it. They both look at each other and become one. It is the painter and his work, it is the work and its painter.
Aurore's paintings are mirrors with strange powers that make us see ourselves there while it is she who shows herself there.
Some find her immodest, asking her to hide this breast, which they only want to see, because children, no doubt, could see it. This breast Aurore knows it, it is hers, it belongs to this body, which is also hers, and this body that she shows herself and that she shows us, she shapes it, on the canvas, with shadows and lights and in life, too. As a painter, Aurore makes us witnesses to this dialogue, this work, this journey. A witness does not act, but he sees, or can see, making his gaze echo what is shown to him. Are we accomplices or even promoters? By taking herself as a subject, Aurore asks us.
Aurore Levasseur's painting is not a little thing placed out of boredom or ease on a sleeping canvas that an accident of life would have unfolded. To taste it, you have to let yourself be immersed in it and think about the hand, the arm, the shoulder, the brain, the being, which, by necessity, has come to rest there while representing itself.
To this double exposure of the subject and its painter is added the obligation of mastery of the Craft. Aurore Levasseur chose to represent herself, forbidding the weakness of a line, the softness of a shadow, a failed proportion. If she wants to see it, there on the canvas, we see the work of a painter.
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October 2018​
Aurore Levasseur
The woman in her truth
By Elisabeth Le Borgne for Posters of Normandy
First solo exhibition for Aurore Levasseur in whom Pierre Gentes and Galerie 75 (Rouen) have chosen to trust until the end of November… at least! Aurore is inspired by classic works to paint women's bodies, not as they are shown to us in fashion magazines, but as they are often "in real life". Let's wish this young artist a great and long career!
Aurore Levasseur attended the Fine Arts courses in Rouen for five years. The difficulties she encountered there helped her to better understand what she wanted to paint and show to the public. Quickly, she opted for the woman's body. Not this starlet body, most of the time exaggerated and reworked for our magazines or our TV shows, but "the real one", the one in which every "normal" woman evolves every day and in which she feels more or less well for lots of different reasons. For example, because she has too many bulges, her thighs are too wide, her breasts are too big or not enough, her legs are too skinny or pudgy, ugly in any case... Because one woman is not the other and what one appreciates in another, this other will reject and envy what one has, she considers, better than herself. In short, it’s complicated! At least it is precisely this imperfect female body that the artist wants to show us by systematically going against current academicism.
Well... Let's face it, but you understood it...: Aurore is round. So what ? This is how. And there's not always much we can do about it. His painting, which no one could take for provocation, therefore has a therapeutic side. For her, but also for other women - and they are legion - who, like her, do not fit into the "norm". And, moreover, if she regularly paints her own body using a mirror for example, she does not hesitate to exaggerate at pleasure - and not in her favor - the condition of this body. Sometimes his works make the viewer uncomfortable. In our society, curvy people “must” or “must” hide their shapes. It was in Palermo where she spent 6 months in an ERASMUS class that the artist became very interested in the history of art and ancient painting which she never stopped reproducing before taking the party to divert it while updating it, thus creating bridges between the past and today. Thanks to a certain recognition of her work, she heard there what she wanted to do and no longer hesitated to take the plunge.
At Galerie 75, Aurore Levasseur presents 16 very large formats full of light and miniatures, more easily manipulated than large canvases, “like women-objects,” she emphasizes. It has only been two years since the artist left school. Until now, she had mainly shown her work at the Salon de Rouen which, already, allowed her to obtain the support of the oldest and to enter the great artistic family of our region. This solo exhibition at Pierre Gentes is a great first for her. Its key words: unity and coherence. Which can only become evident with work and the passage of time. How does it see itself evolving in the near future? She doesn't know... Everything will depend on her state of mind at the moment. “There is no constant in emotions,” she rightly asserts. It's all a question of dialogue with the body which can in turn lead to a kind of provocation or torture, or conversely, generosity and humour. An artist who has more than one trick up her sleeve and who deserves to be followed!
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Elisabeth Le Borgne
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Aurore Levasseur, painting – Until November 30, 2018 – Galerie 75 – 75, rue Bouvreuil – 76000 Rouen – Visible on working days from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. – Tel: 06 77 38 48 33 – To discover​
