Press Release

GALERIE D’( A )
art contemporain
la matière est lumière
CHRISTIAN JELK
3 FEBRUARY - 31 MARCH 2012
Opening Reception Thursday 2 February | 6 -9 pm
La matière est lumière (Matter is light)
“Drawing is like a moment of silence.
A fragile membrane of time dissolving into the immaterial, vast and empty night of first beginnings,
full of all the thoughts to be born, of all the marvels to be revealed.
Pure thinking patterns evolved in the eye.
Tracking signs of absence in poetical abstraction.
Each drawing creates a world.
A trail of captured energies disappearing into light.
Drawing is timelessness.
Drawing reflects the means of my existence “outside the world”,
an opening of one’s thoughts upon emptiness, upon the void.
A wound into which I look for meaning.
A place defying all codification prior to language.
Engraving reveals this world vision
and drawing acts as an imprint, the scar of an ever renewed quest,
a suspended, vibrating diagram.
Drawing is the territory of my own intimate thoughts,
thoughts that become engraved here and there,
naked,
fragile,
explosive.
Engraving unlocks a new dimension: incarnation, revealed sign penetrating the world.
The paper is laid like a shroud on the light of the matrix, inked and cleaned.
It foreshadows the end of a reign (that of vertical time?) and an opening on the world, a gift of oneself.
A sign, a word in becoming and to be shared.
A point in time, an enlightening of thought.
”
Drawing is intimacy looking at the world. Engraving is the gift of this intimacy.
Christian Jelk
Fragments | december 2011
Translation from the French : Patricia Fernandez
Pour plus de renseignements, veuillez contacter :
Jacqueline Bettinelli ou Béatrice Cayetano-Gonin :
+41 21 311 35 01 ou [email protected]
GALERIE D’( A ) JACQUELINE BETTINELLI AVENUE DU LÉMAN 20 CH-1005 LAUSANNE SWITZERLAND
T. + 41 21 311 35 01 F. + 41 21 312 23 80 www.galerie-d-a.com [email protected] No. Fed. ch-550-1058887-3
CHRISTIAN JELK
Born in 1970, Billens, Switzerland.
Architect, art curator, visual artist.
Experiments with engraving at the Atelier Raymond Meyer, Lutry, Switzerland
Lives in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland
CURATED EXHIBITIONS by Christian Jelk
2011
2009
2008
2007
SUPRA100, Uni-Mail, Geneva University, Switzerland; Exhibition’s pavilion for the 100 years
of the supraconductivity.
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni, Espace Arlaud, Lausanne, Switzerland
Materia Prima, Jean-François Reymond’s monographic exhibition, Pully Museum, Switzerland
TRANSIT*, open air exhibition in containers on the main square of Lausanne and Yverdon,
Switzerland.
“Tout peut-il être montré ?”, debate (25.11.09) organized by Pro Helvetia, Geneva, Switzerland.
Origine, Espace Arlaud, Lausanne, Switzerland
Papier, Espace Arlaud, Lausanne, Switzerland
PUBLICATIONS, CATALOGUES
2012
2011
2009 –
2008
Forme du dessin, Éditions Art & Fiction, publication in March, Switzerland
Oblique, éditions Vie-Art-Cité, first issue, (Swiss art magazine published once a year), impression
of 1600 copies + 30 head copies with a unique printed proof by Christian Jelk, signed by the artist
and numbered from 1 to 30. ISBN: 978-2-8399-0959-4
Regular collaboration with the Architectural and Design Magazine Hochparterre,
aktuelles wettbewerbeszene
Origine, Espace Arlaud, Switzerland
VARIOUS
2010 –
2010 –
2010 –
Chairman of Derrière le Mur, for the creation of artists’ and researchers’ residency on the banks
of the river Loire, France.
Chairman of Visarte.Vaud – Visarte is a professional association of Switzerland’s visual artists that
defends the latter’s interests on both the political and social levels. Visarte seeks to ensure favourable
conditions for artistic production, and provides counsel to the artists.
Expert in museography, examing board for the future Museum of fine arts in Lausanne,
Switzerland
GALERIE D’( A ) JACQUELINE BETTINELLI AVENUE DU LÉMAN 20 CH-1005 LAUSANNE SWITZERLAND
T. + 41 21 311 35 01 F. + 41 21 312 23 80 www.galerie-d-a.com [email protected] No. Fed. ch-550-1058887-3