Maïlys Seydoux-Dumas
In her Paris workshop, Maïlys Seydoux Dumas observes the elements that compose her environment: the objects, the small, enclosed garden, the birds in the sky, the movements of plants and the changing of the seasons. A state of contemplative poetry enriches the work she varies between painting, lithographs, tapestries, and engraved wood—all in delicate pastel tones.
“Everything happens in silence, this is the work of painting. I keep an eye on everything that happens here. The light fades, the daylight falls, the swallows crisscross the sky.” Like a storyteller, she names the objects and brings them to life as characters. There are echoes of Giorgio Morandi in the vibration and sensitivity of her approach, the subtlety of her interpretation.
“I make connections with the themes that I draw, I rediscover them again each day. Small nothings are magnificent,” she explains. The subjects evolve according to a personal narrative, like the objects painted separately and then arranged into a fascinating “Theatre of objects”, a scenography entitled Le rideau se lève aux Acacias, scène d’atelier. In this publication, each object is an actual character with its own personality and connecting relationship with its neighbors. In the same way, in Le Périple de l’étoile, the artist gives a leading role to a starfish found on the beach in Dieppe. This star was the theme of her exhibition at the Dôme de Saumur in 2021, and it returns in this exhibition at Le Salon Vert, in particular as jewelry, in order to enter into a dialogue with the objects of her theatre.
Trained in engraving at the Ecole nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, the artist very quickly embraced a variety of techniques, which provides her with a new approach for each of her projects. Her recent tellingly titled exhibitions have been both solo and in collaboration with Haïm Kern. Some examples are A chacun son étoile at the Dôme du Théâtre de la Ville in Saumur, Le Rideau de lève aux Acacias, scène d’atelier at the Château de Varengeville in Brussels, Bleu or rose at the Sagot-Le Garrec Gallery in Paris, Histoire de peintre at the Alexandre Dumas Cultural Center in Villers-Cotterêts and Art Elysées at the Koralewski Gallery in Paris.
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