Galerie Lara Vincy.

On the occasion of his fifth solo exhibition in the galerie Lara Vincy, after allowing us to discover from the inside his approach and his body (the exhibition Boules ? in 2004, revealed the origins of the spheres that Jean-Luc Parant had been molding by hand for over forty years), inside his vision and inside his head (with the exhibitions of his bookcases in wax and in terracotta, entitled  Bibliothèque idéale and (L)ivre de nuit in 2006 and 2008), then the innards of the fantastical animal that lives within him  (the Parantosaure(s) in 2010), Jean-Luc Parant is to-day exploring the potential of the  « marvels » or « curiosities » he has always collected instinctively and ardently by swallowing them, making them his own, to finally offer them to us to see (anew) from perspectives as poetical as they are unexpected.

Thus, those ancient herbariums illuminated by drawings of little berries in Indian ink, that dried seaweed revived by means of the accompanying arabesque drawings, those assemblages of butterfly wings patiently copied and transcribed in fantastical drawings, those discomposed words in little bubbles covered with the letters of the alphabet intertwined within a transparent head, those  « fragments » of insects veiled in words, those shells inhabited by miniature landslides, those transfigured  molting of cicadas, those scraps of lace ornamented with cabalistic signs, those used envelopes but rejuvenated by the chiseling of the pen on their surface…

Whimsical and disordered accumulations of his taste ornament that  « chamber of  marvels», that Jean-Luc Parant underpins with intermingled chance findings and good judgment,  thus expressing, in a kind of conversion towards the origins of the museum and of art, a star filled œuvre that delights us; his dreams and his own inner world in small scale.

The artist – having always examined in his many poet’s texts about fish and their fins, birds and their wings, serpents and their scales – is here trying out the attributes of every kind of expression in nature (animal, vegetable or mineral) that amaze us. In imitating nature, Jean-Luc Parant places the fundamental themes of  imitation and sublimation at the very heart of the new works shown in the Galerie Lara Vincy. « All ideas in art forms find their model in nature’s own production. God created and man imitates », wrote  Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle.

This little Parant museum, miscellaneous and with an encyclopedic approach, is a reflection of the artist’s œuvre: within an infinite variation, although always based on the same theme, in the endless accumulation despite always using the greatest soberness of means.

Kristell Loquet, July 2012

In partnership with  Vin et Culture, Jean-Luc Parant designed for that event the dressing for a bottle limited to 50 copies.

A reading by Jean-Luc Parant will take place in the galerie Lara Vincy, on Thursday October 18, at 7.30pm precisely during the Nocturne of the Parisian galleries organized by the CPGA on the occasion of Fiac.