Exhibition Flower Power

Michaël Cailloux, invitation card to the exhibition “Flower power”

Le Pouvoir des Fleurs / Flower Power exhibition – Unpublished works

Flower power, or how to immerse yourself in the world of Michaël Cailloux for this new exhibition at Les Dominicaines!

It’s not a matter of being present or strolling around, but of vibrating to feel the contemporary creations of this artist who takes every pretext (travel, exhibitions, books, museums, historical documents, herbariums, etc.) to get out his felt-tip pen and sketch what he sees.
Few are human, despite some ex-votos, but they are his favorite subject. More than a theme, it’s almost a kind of manifesto, an ode to Nature. In fact, isn’t one of his sculptures called Mother Nature?

Nature in a dreamlike vision, based on meticulous, scrupulous, loving observation to render every effect of matter, every movement, every attitude, from animal to vegetable. Coat, carapace, wing, skin, leaf, petal… The slightest surface comes to life in delicate shades of color, sometimes evanescent or as if powdered for her engravings and Renaissances, or in an explosion of variegated, vivid colors for her fine art prints.
His compositions are part of a fantasy world, an escape from reality from which he draws his inspiration, only to transcend it and sublimate it with the codes of an artist whose line never fails. A clear line at the service of his drawings and the execution of his matrix for the etching plate. Each drawn element integrates a system, another world, a differentiated reality that the artist manages at different stages and using different techniques: drawing, etching, engraved or drawn wall jewelry, tapestry, decorative arts, animations.

To the power of masterful drawing, the artist does not oppose color. Instead, color comes to the fore to animate moving surfaces. Hybridization, profusion, all-over principle, repetition, Michaël Cailloux plays with motifs like a musician with musical notes. Each finds its place in the labyrinth of the artist’s mind, emerging in 2D or sculpture.

The delicacy of the intention is felt in this work of beneficial sincerity.

In the days of the sisters of the Order of St. Dominic and part of the building that now houses the exhibitions, the convent gardens offered medicinal plants known and used in the 17th and 18th centuries for their therapeutic virtues. A garden with an anthropomorphic outline was thus reconstituted near the cultural center in the 2000s, bringing together plants beneficial to every part of the body.

Michaël Cailloux’s exhibition pays homage to nature’s protector, and our wonder at it – made possible by artistic creation – must not allow us to forget the danger of its disappearance.
In this way, Michaël Cailloux creates a new bestiary and a new herbarium in which man must find his place, in all humility.

Nathalie Béreau, December 2024

Michaël Cailloux, Renaissance, 2024, « Le parfum des fleurs /the scent of flowers », etching, embossing and drawing on paper, single print run.