Untitled, 2023, Oil on canvas, Courtesy Galerie Claire Gastaud and Copyright Milène Sanchez
A series of exhibitions dedicated to French artists at the ICICLE Cultural Space in Shanghai throughout 2024 continues this summer with Milène Sanchez, one of the most promising young talent of the new painting scene.
This is Sanchez’s first exhibition outside Europe, as her career is rapidly developing. Twenty paintings created by the artist in 2023, including several large canvases, have been brought together under the curatorship of Myriam Kryger.
They compose a hypnotic and sparkling choreography of shapes and colors, often based on flowers, sometimes on faces. It is life and living, its fragility, its transformations, its infinite possibilities, and what it contains of the indefinable that interests Sanchez. Her paintings play with blurred edges and sharpness, opacity and transparency, light and dark, in a fascinating oscillation of appearance and disappearance.
For ever gushing VIII, 2023, Oil on canvas, Courtesy Galerie Claire Gastaud, Copyright Milène Sanchez
Her approach to painting is deeply rooted in the fleeting nature of perception. She strives to capture ephemeral emotions, to distill moments that are transient and elusive, rather than narrating a specific story.
Her creative process is unique as she begins with photographs — often found in flea markets or taken from film scenes or online images — using them as intermediaries. This detachment from direct reality provides a vital space for artistic interpretation, freeing her from the constraints of literal representation.
“Painting is about capturing the immediate feeling, weakening the narrative to seize a rushing, transient sensation,” Sanchez said. “Reality confines me, so I need an intermediary image.”
As Sanchez paints, she gradually distances herself from the photograph, aiming not to replicate the image but to transcend it.
Her technique is characterized by the use of pigments she prepares herself to explore new shades. She works with oils with turpentine, and skillfully employs the technique of glazing, overlaying thin successive layers, allowing her to create effects of depth and mystery in each of her canvases.
Lighter than the wind IV, 2023, Oil on canvas, Courtesy Galerie Claire Gastaud, Copyright Milène Sanchez
Light is integral to her compositions, particularly in her floral series. Flowers, whether in bloom or decay, are illuminated as if they were light sources themselves, emitting a palpable sense of vibration and luminosity. Sanchez often employs near-black hues — crafted from blues, browns, and grays — as background, creating striking contrasts that explore the interplay between light and dark.
Flowers are a recurrent motif in her paintings, partly because the artist is deeply fascinated by the overarching theme of life itself, and flowers, in their varied states of existence, symbolize this theme powerfully.
Furthermore, flowers offer Sanchez a profound medium for abstract expression, enabling her to transcend narrative constraints and immerse herself in pure, emotive abstraction. Her paintings inhabit a timeless and placeless realm, free from specific events or environments, and embody a pure, immediate presence that focuses on existence in the here and now. This detachment from narrative allows Sanchez to explore the very essence of life.
In the cold heat of pool, 2023, Oil on canvas, Courtesy Galerie Claire Gastaud, Copyright Milène Sanchez
Her work “In the cold heat of pool,” for example, captures four figures gently immersed in water, their forms melding seamlessly with the liquid. The scene transcends specific narratives, highlighting a profound connection between the individuals and their surroundings. The use of soft, warm tones and blurred lines creates a dreamlike quality, evoking a sense of unity and serene contemplation.
“Sprays of flowers that emerge like flames in the darkness, overflowing arrangements that invade the space of the canvas, blurred faces with fiery hues seized in the blaze of a kiss, evanescent female silhouettes connected by a wave resembling the water in which they are immersed; each work by Sanchez presents itself to our gaze in a sort of eruption,” said the exhibition curator Kryger. “The true subject seems to be the enigma of the sensitive world.”
Exhibition info：
Date: Through August 25
Address: 1-2F, Bldg 2, 2570 Hechuan Road 合川路2570号
Admission: Free