Marine Assoumov

painter and collagist

 

For more than twenty years, Marine Assoumov has worked upon line and color with equal success. She owes her safety of hand to the assiduous frequentation of the street and the studio where she made so much drawings, created out of a gesture whose virtuosity confuses the layman I am.

It is this famous “apparent facility” which has fascinated more than one! I often met Marine with a pencil in the hand and when, in her studio, I look into her portfolios where thousands of sketch are carefully piled up, I live again of the weekends shared in Loiret or the evenings between friends. If the artist drawings evoke for me an infinite speed, her paintings reflect more slowness, more thought, the work laboured over again many times, through the thickness of the paste, the “scars” and the transparencies, such of the outlines towards the possible former ones. Because beyond the controversy on the importance of the colour in the painting, the way in which the color is applied counts as much as the choice of the harmonies. Today, Marine Assoumov gives us a beautiful series of oil landscapes: neither figurative nor abstract, but elliptic, like her drawings, with a share of mystery and unfinished, to let to us dream. These paintings touch us by the balance of their structure, the harmony of their tonalities, their “vibrato”, remote echo of the jazz that the artist appreciates so much.

And then, this exhibition allows us to discover the last collages of Marine Assoumov , on the border between line and color; landscapes and nudes, initially stroked with a thick brush of ink, then enriched by coloured matter contribution, material heteroclite (paperboard, packing papers, newspaper, etc) which gives them flesh, substance and depth.

Exactitude of the feature, accuracy of the colours, inspiration and inventiveness, rigour of work, Marine Asoumov charms us and enchants us.