Solène Kerlo's work is like a journey of initiation. Her paintings, with their earthy, mineral palette, reveal elemental forms in relief. They tell of her meditative experiences, her journey towards a more intuitive, wilder nature. 

 

In search of pure gesture and direct contact with the material, the artist applies her color pigments by hand. It's a way of reconnecting with a sense that she feels is all too often forgotten.

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Her work lies at the crossroads of mythology, anthropology and psychoanalysis. It questions modern man's relationship with his roots and his collective unconscious: “I'm very influenced by the work of J. Campbell on monomyth, Carl Jung on the collective unconscious, and F. Descola on animism, for example. Through my reading of these authors, as well as my travels among vernacular peoples, I collect the stories of the world's creation and try to draw out the great universal symbols common to all mankind.”

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For the Matières Primaires exhibition, Solène Kerlo is creating her first site-specific installation in Porte B.'s airlock, whose lime-coated walls are adorned with ancestral symbols. A sensory and immersive experience, Solène Kerlo's grotto plunges us into a forgotten time, a time when the sacred manifested itself in all the elements of nature, the time of origins.

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