Irène Darget-Bastien

EXHIBITIONS

2016
- Permanently - Fine Art Gallery - Biarritz - France
   4 avenue de l’impératrice
2015
- October Crypt Saint Eugenie Biarritz
   'Summer show' Leonard Tourne gallery New York
2014
- Collective exhibition Brussels
   Bridgehampton New York Contempo ...Read more

EXHIBITIONS

2016
- Permanently - Fine Art Gallery - Biarritz - France
   4 avenue de l’impératrice
2015
- October Crypt Saint Eugenie Biarritz
   'Summer show' Leonard Tourne gallery New York
2014
- Collective exhibition Brussels
   Bridgehampton New York Contemporary Art Fair
   Leonard Tourne Gallery New York
2012
- Gallery 47 - Biarritz - France

CRITIQUE

Since her childhood, Irène Darget-Bastien has been interested in all artistic expressions.
After studying in the Fine-Arts, she learnt the piano, and then very soon after, the art of drawing and painting inspired her.
After a complementary education, she attended a Yugoslav painter's workshop where she gained real control of different techniques.
Finally, she became inspired by abstraction.
Since 1979, she has participated in national and international exhibitions. Her workshop is fenced off with greenery, and is on the seaside, which allows her to fully express herself, but her travels also give her a good source of inspiration.
She has a gift of transposing on the canvas, memorised images of her trips around the five continents.
Rich of a personal coloured vision of living things, we can find this energy in all of her creations.
Obviously, the artist uses brushes and cloths with ardour and vivacity.
Each painting shows a reduced number of colours, sometimes by modulation but sometimes by contrast.
The colour range, skilfully studied, structures the pictorial space. Her compositions on a huge format are well balanced.
Her painting is plentiful of colours, starting with monochrome reds, which breaks the presence of flat tints or a lukewarm white accent that reveals a necessary extension in cohesion of the work.
She also plays with dark consonances such as the obscurity or the rocky depth.
Light, composition, shape, everything is dominated by furthered harmony brought to its height until the kindling of the painting.
Everything, here, emerges without constraint. The lavish tint areas in its colours, creates a violent colouring, exacerbated fireworks and a deepened spot, everything explodes in symphony.
It looks like that this capacity to play with tones is not enough; the artist adds happiness, matt and brilliant effects.
This dominion of colours suggests either a volcanic landscape with this incandescent fire and lava flow, or a Nordic nature, or an abyss.
The artist extracts herself from temporal limits, aiming at the truth, the sense or the absolute.
The colour should embody the most diversified passions, the most daring thoughts.
The spirit and the emotion meet up in a sensual and lyric confrontation.
Her imaginary world can lead us in the abysses; her canvas well done in the tranquillity of her workshop expresses a shining temperament.
She sculpts the colour, grabs it, embraces it, impairs it, spreads it, nothing is said, but everything is suggested and we finally breath at the rhythm of the painting.
This representation is somewhat dreamlike, forever fascinating, and Irène has beautifully produced this excellent piece of art work.
This is a painting of character and the success, close to well-informed collectors, is fully justified.

J. St-Aubin