the painter Stéphane Quoniam exhibits his colorful works at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen
A rather special exhibition is held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Caen. The painter and designer Stéphane Quoniam unveils his diary, carefully constructed over nine years. Over the pages, dramas, encounters, memories are told, all in color.
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122: this is the number of watercolors by the artist Stéphane Quoniam which are spread out along the royal blue walls of the prints cabinet of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen. That is to say almost half of the 298 pages composing the work Like a newspaper, produced by the Caen painter from 2012 to 2020. This eponymous exhibition invites the visitor to explore these years, immortalized by the artist’s brush.
It all started in a garage sale, the artist found an old cadastral register there, then decided to paint the pages over the years. “A mood, a news, a landscape, a meeting, a reading, it is all this freedom that composes Like a newspaper “, explains Emmanuelle Delapierre, the director of the museum.
From the destruction of the historical heritage of Palmyra to the Bataclan attacks, to “whatever the cost” preceding the confinement, Stéphane Quoniam retraces eight years shaken by historical events and the vagaries of everyday life. “He is a man of his time, the idea is to question his time and how each person’s daily life is made up and the dimension of political commitment.», Adds the director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen.
The artist, a former professor of geography at the University of Caen, has shared his life between his two passions: art and teaching. Marked by his many stays abroad, Stéphane Quoniam invites reflection on our world, shelled in all its seams. Through his colored prints, he thus hopes “conjurer oblivion” horrors of the past.
Stéphane Quoniam,“Come a journal”, until February 20 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen.