« I am completely drawn to the line. A line is so beautiful; it has no substance, and yet it attracts the light. There is an explosion of the line against the white. »

Ode Bertrand, a student of Aurélie Nemours, draws using a ruling pen and liquid black acrylic paint. She fills the surface of her square canvas with lines. Light is captured in such a way that a color is stimulated when there is a match between the width of a mesh and the wavelength of that color. As a result, her canvases appear yellowish, bluish, greenish, or reddish, even though they consist only of black lines on a white background. Colored lines superimposed on colored backgrounds reveal a color that was not used. Within the traces of her construction, Ode Bertrand creates signs resembling holes in a stretched net. These signs have no names, but a beautiful form that lingers in the memory.

Herward Tappe 1989

ODE BERTRAND

Born in 1930, lives and works in Paris

Ode Bertrand works, as she likes to say, in series of pieces; the setbacks she encounters during her creative process call for the next painting, and the series ends when her gaze is no longer surprised. Color is not her credo, yet it is present at times in her work, often revealing the line, the interstice between two colors. She speaks of her paintings as presences, what remains when everything is removed; she would like them to be the imprint of a mystical presence. Texture and layering are not part of her practice, yet some of her works are treated in this way, but this is more to refine the tonal value than to play with transparency, since there is none. What is certain is that we are far from aesthetic ostentation, and this exhibition will compel the viewer to slow down.

Our first collaboration dates back to 1989. I met her in her studio; she confided in me that she had practiced dance for a long time before dedicating herself to painting. She told me that her works would never be larger than the space her hand could reach.

The stroke, the line, the rhythm are the guiding threads of her research. She immediately embraced geometric abstraction, embarking on this path without hesitation. The niece of Aurélie Nemours and her only disciple, she was long content with this sharp eye for her work; solitude and contemplation were part of her daily life during her early years as a painter.

She works, as she likes to say, in series of pieces; the setbacks she encounters during her creative process call for the next painting, and the series ends when her gaze is no longer surprised. Color is not her credo, yet it is present at times in her work, often revealing the line, the interstice between two colors. She speaks of her paintings as presences, what remains when everything is removed; she would like them to be the imprint of a mystical presence. Texture and layering are not part of her practice, yet some of her works are treated in this way, but this is more to refine the tonal value than to play with transparency, since there is none. What is certain is that we are far from aesthetic ostentation, and that this exhibition will compel the viewer to slow down.

Diane Lahumière 2017

Works in museums and public collections

_Civic Museum of Contemporary Art, Calasseta, Italy
_Museum of Mâcon, France
_Museum of Montbéliard, France
of Cambrai, France
_Museum of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
_Museum of Tomé, Japan
_Museum of Hünfeld, Germany
_National Museum Gwangju, South Korea
_MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina
_Georges Pompidou National Center, France

Selection of the main exhibitions

2025 - Lahumière Gallery “Resonances” with Sophie Coroller

2017 Museum of Contemporary Art, MACBA, Buenos Aires (Argentina)
2016 Louis Moret Foundation, Martigny (Switzerland)
2015 Rhythm and Light, Lee-Bauwens Gallery, Art'Loft, Brussels (Belgium)
2010 Geometry and Colors, Sens Museum (France)
2007 Enduring Geometric Abstraction at Réalités Nouvelles,
Château de Tours (France)

Selection of works available in the shop

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