collant, poisseux, visqueux

With "collant, poisseux, visqueux", Galerie Nicolas Salloum inaugurates its program through a foundational gesture. This first exhibition does not simply bring together two artists. It asserts a curatorial position, a sensibility, and a commitment to emerging practices that operate within unstable zones of reality.

The decision to bring together Clara Lou Villechaise and Rémi Galtier reflects this ambition. Their practices, while distinct, share a sensitivity to transformation and instability. Both artists explore intermediate states of matter and image, producing environments in which forms appear in constant mutation.

Clara Lou Villechaise’s painting operates at the threshold of landscape. Her compositions revisit the codes of an idealized nature only to disrupt them. Thick flows, unstable surfaces, and viscous textures interfere with spatial readability. The landscapes appear contaminated, saturated, almost toxic. The pictorial surface becomes a milieu where forms slide, merge, and dissolve. The image no longer functions as a window but as matter, an unstable zone in which perception itself becomes uncertain. Her painting constructs environments that are both mental and physical, spaces where the viewer is gradually absorbed into a dense and ambiguous atmosphere.

Facing these pictorial environments, Rémi Galtier’s sculptures emerge as ambiguous presences. Developed through an intuitive and accumulative process, the forms appear obstructed, thickened, and transformed. They evoke fragments of architecture, distorted domestic objects, or organisms in mutation. Function gradually disappears, replaced by a physical presence that is almost bodily. The sculptures oscillate between softness and tension, familiarity and estrangeness, suspended in an intermediate state. For this exhibition, Rémi Galtier also conceived a series of custom asymmetrical plinths designed specifically to accompany and support the works. These structures are not neutral display devices but integral components of the exhibition. Their irregular geometries and subtle imbalances alter the perception of the sculptures and introduce a quiet instability within the space. The works appear to hover, slide, or temporarily stabilize on these uncertain surfaces. The plinth becomes an extension of the sculptural language and participates in the construction of the exhibition as an environment.

Several works also incorporate luminous elements. Light appears diffuse, sometimesemerging from within the forms, sometimes grazing their surfaces. These luminous presences do not illuminate in a conventional sense. They disturb, accentuate textures, and generate shifting shadows. Light becomes another material, contributing to the viscous atmosphere that permeates the exhibition. The space itself seems to thicken, as if the works were slowly modifying the density of the environment.

The encounter between Clara Lou Villechaise’s paintings and Rémi Galtier’s sculptures produces an environment of mutual contamination. The paintings acquire a sculptural dimension, while the sculptures evoke condensed landscapes. The exhibition unfolds as a space of slow circulation, where forms adhere, persist, and transform. The title "collant, poisseux, visqueux" functions as a critical proposition. It refers not only to material qualities but also to a perceptual condition. The works do not impose themselves immediately. They infiltrate, cling to the gaze, and generate a slow, sensory experience.

With "collant, poisseux, visqueux", Galerie Nicolas Salloum establishes a clear curatorial direction. Supporting emerging artists, privileging unstable forms, and conceiving exhibitions as sensory environments. This inaugural exhibition lays the foundation for a program attentive to transitional states, hybrid materialities, and practices that resist stabilization.

Here, forms do not settle.
They accumulate, drift, and persist.
Slowly, they inhabit the space.

They become sticky,
gooey,
viscous.

Salomé Moindjie-Gallet