Contemporary Renaissance

Galerie Pierre-Yves Caër, in partnership with American Express

An exchange of perspectives with the Japanese painter Akira Kugimachi at an exhibition at the Pierre-Yves Caër Gallery, in partnership with American Express.

Today, we are living in a disruptive age, made up of innovations, of divides, of openness to the world, and of culture clashes. The West and Modernity are coming to the end of their logic: with individuals feeling lonely, rationalism at an impasse, and progress failing. To cap it all, the ongoing ecological disaster is calling into question this “humanism” that has assumed the right to place Humans at the centre of Nature. For that matter, who gave it that right?

On one side, Akira Kugimachi proposes that we should “see landscape as nature again”, as Sally Bonn puts it, as if we could remove subjectivity from the human eye. At the same time, he plunges us into a plant world that confines to abstraction. Thus, he brings out a primitive memory from a futuristic viewpoint. Through this double movement, he suggests topical questions about climate and the future of humankind.

On the other side, Luc Dognin questions the work of the craftsperson as regards his or her capacity to regain an emotion, and a feeling of fullness, by transcending matter in the spirit of the fine craft trades, while also investing in the issues of the age: innovation, and ecology.