Unfathomable memories of water

Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine). It’s undeniable, the selection committee for this 16th edition has flair. There are so many that the thirty emerging artists whose applications were selected by the 12 members of the jury would almost make us forget the presence of certain stars of contemporary art invited by the Biennale d’Issy team. The newcomers have nothing to be ashamed of in front of their elders, quite the contrary: through their technical mastery and their sometimes unexpected approach to this year’s theme, “L’eau intranquille”, they steal the show from the regulars, first and foremost Barthélémy Togo, Hervé Di Rosa and Robert Combas. Among the talents selected by the jury, evocations of ecological disaster and migratory routes juxtapose allegories of time that are as poetic as they are melancholy. Sophie Deschamps-Causse, curator and president of the Biennale, Anne Malherbe, guest curator, and Didier Genty, scenographer, managed to create spatial resonances between these themes while avoiding the pitfall of an overly conservative presentation by theme.

Ruins, wreckage, reflection…

The landscape with ruins, so present in Jacob van Ruisdael and in the romantic painting of the 19th century, regains its letters of nobility. If History is usually buried in the thick forest, the ruins here blend into a watery and ageless setting. The defeated verticality of the ruin, characteristic of John Constable’s paintings, is at the heart of the video and sculptural installation Dismembered Architecture (2019, [voir ill.]) by Halveig Villand. The slow erosion of the salt columns, exposed to fine jets of water, is presented by the video while the material is nothing more than a vestige, in the form of fragments of columns lying on the ground. Further on, the misty silhouette of a wreck looms in the depths of the ocean. In his large oil on canvas The Hold (2022), Coraline by Chiara marvelously transcribes the underwater vision, determined by the refractive index of water, using its deep glazes and fluid impastos. This underwater landscape thus becomes a memory support: “the sea is History”,wrote the poet Derek Walcott. These abysses are opposed by the dreamlike and aerial landscape of the painting. Uncertain reflections (2025) by Mathilde Lestiboudois. Faced with these refined and deceptive arcades, it is impossible not to think of the impossible architectures of Maurits Cornelis Escher and the metaphysical landscapes of Giorgio De Chirico. Like Villand, Lestiboudois summons two temporalities in his work: the fragmented arcades rise towards the sky while their faded splendor is reflected in a pool of limpid water.

The genre of still life is not left out. In addition to the “Still” series (2021-2022) by Hélène Langlois, faithful to the genre, the mini-cabinets of curiosity by Benoît Dutour, a set of naturalia andartificialia encapsulated in Hanging tears of joy (2025) in sculpted optical glass, are striking in their refinement. Clockworks, driftwood, butterflies, pins and gold powder are frozen forever in the aqueous solution contained in the glass. Centerpieces of the Biennale, these meditative works mark the return of an art of interiority in an artistic landscape that has become a veritable echo chamber of current societal issues.