Marion Charlet

Marion CHARLET will be back at La Patinoire Royale |Galerie Valérie Bach for a third exhibition, held under the glass roof gallery, with a new proposal entitled “Sloth is no Capital Sin”.

Brand new acrylics on canvas painted at the end of 2022 will be presented in all formats. “In my B ed”, “Night and D ay”, “Rêveuse” (“Dreamer”), “Caresse”, “Sun Cream” are as many titles that plunge us into a swirl of laziness, relaxation, well-being, recre ation and tenderness.

According to Seneca and Cicero, otium (a Latin word evoking an individual’s free t ime occupations) is a time for writing, studying and philosophy. In Augustin times, otium became an expression relating to a way of life implying philosophical readings, art, physical exercise, social life and conviviality. Despite common thought, otium is no synonym for “doing nothing”, on the contrary, it is a time for studious and fertile leisure. Cicero even proclaimed: “otium cum dignitate” (noble idleness).

This noble idleness, be it dignified or not, is what Marion Charlet has been painting in watercolour. We are far from the dances of the last series she presented at the galler y in June 2021, where dancing, swirling, flying bodies were painted in watercolour or acrylic.

Here, everything invites to relaxation and quietness. Some paintings place us in cosy beds, in an atmosphere of acidulous colours, others transpor t us to midsummer for a waterside nap… This is how Marion makes us reflect on what we do of our lifetime, choosing either dilution or concentration, which, Seneca says, define two categories of individuals: occupati and otiosi.

An encounter wit h this young and talented painter means being summoned into a dream, liberated from any kind of responsibility, enjoying this inner liberation which, far from utter laziness or iner tia, is the necessary condition to have one’s mind nurtured.

Let us smoke philosophically
And be walking
Peacefully
Doing nothing is so pleasing

Pau l Verlaine, 1889