« Nous qui désirons sans fin » is the title of Karine Rougier's solo exhibition at Drawing Lab. Awarded the Drawing Now Prize in 2022, the artist is taking advantage of this invitation to propose a real collective walk. From drawings realized with graphite or gouache to paintings, via watercolors, and from films to slideshows, her exhibition offers more than one story. This exhibition is a collection of stories by Karine Rougier and her special guests.

Her new drawings reimagine Nature with a combination of human and animal forms. Physical bodies and hidden powers come together in a unique and mesmerizing embrace. Filled with vibrant vital energy, Karine Rougier’s compositions stem from a liberated gaze which imbues each figure with passion and power. Karine Rougier's miniatures were originally inspired by the illuminations of Clavis Artis alchemical manuscript from the late 17th or early 18th century. But they resonate deeply with the urgency of today’s climate challenge, by touching upon the power of nature, and the relationships between living creatures and the elements. "We are the children of a devastated world, trying to be reborn in a world waiting to be created. Learning to become human is the only radical thing to do." Raoul Vaneigheim.

At the Drawing Lab, Karine Rougier explores her artistic world in new ways. Playing with scale and techniques, she blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction. Her drawings teem with details and include icons and characteristics from civilizations around the world. Her drawings teem with details and include icons and characteristics from civilizations around the world. Drawing has always been a core part of her art. And its wealth of detail has viewers move closer to explore her art’s many meanings.

In this free-flowing exhibition where water and body fluids create a bond, Karine Rougier revisits and revives those antique images, as if protecting herself from today’s terrifying reality. She opens up our hearts to magic and tenderness, while giving a voice to imaginary monsters and other worlds. All this as she explores the universal nature of hugging, breastfeeding, and the physical intermingling of bodies as sources of love and subjective or collective energy.

Drawings rise from the paper and come to life in two short films Karine Rougier made with Valérie Pelet. Created at the Centre de Conservation et de Ressources (CCR) in the MuCEM2 in Marseilles thanks to a Mécènes du Sud production grant, their short films feature both playing and divination cards. These cards span several centuries and have been carefully cataloged by and stored in Marseilles’ CCR. The duo’s films compare the aesthetics of the gestures involved in archiving cards versus playing cards, both vainly seeking to reduce the role of chance. Whether on land or in water, the drawings in Karine Rougier and Valérie Pelet’s films play with the cards’ various details, up to and including the stars and the gods.

Karine Rougier has also extended two invitations. First and foremost, Karine Rougier invited Stephen Ellcock who is a collector of images, researcher, and author, notably of books from which the artist often sourced images. Stephen Ellcock has picked images that echo Karine Rougier's work, thus inverting the regular sequence of events in her artistic process. Since they share common interests in cosmology, illuminated manuscripts, alchemy, magical texts, and all forms of esotericism more generally, a fruitful dialogue occurred like a “cosmic dance”

And since she teaches at the Beaux-Arts de Marseille art school, Karine Rougier also asked students to "narrate in miniature form" using playing cards and divinatory cards. Their artistic responses take the form of drawn and photographed slides which, in the exhibition, are shown in projected images.

« Nous qui désirons sans fin » is an expedition into the vast world of drawing. It is an invitation to pick and play a card, an invitation to behold a new world.

Steven Vandeporta
Director of artistic projects and exhibition coordinator of the Prize