Galerie d'Art La Renaissance: Artists' collective exhibition

Castellar, the village that transforms itself and opens itself to Art.
Four passionate Mentonnais artists, sculptors and painters meet in the heart of the medieval village in a place opened for the occasion in order to share their passion and to make discover it to amateurs, connoisseurs and visitors. Place Clemenceau, a room that used to be a restaurant, is at the disposal of the group of visual artists and lends itself well to the exhibition. The place transposes us between sea and mountains and leaves room for the imagination.
-Daniel Denel, the initiator of the project has in another life worked with wood, turned the olive tree and then as a carpenter craftsman he makes on order furniture and replicas of existing decorations. Then, he proceeded to the modelling of the earth and the realization of moulds in resin in school of plastic arts in Annecy. And back in the Menton area, he attended an art school for the direct cutting of various stones. Today and for the past ten years he has been making contemporary sculptures in marble from different sources, Carrara, Caunes Minervois, Pyrenees and in bronze.
-Florence Duet discovered sculpture in the 2000's until it became for her a life balance. Her art is essentially dedicated to the representation of the female body. The sensuality exhales from each of her creations. Alabaster, stone of Luberon, bronze are her materials of choice.
She plays with the stones and she sublimates them. Several times awarded, she regularly exhibits in the region. In 2014 and again in 2017, Florence was awarded the first prize for sculpture at the International Exhibition of World Artists in Cannes.
-Olivier Fonseca A graduate of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, I use stoneware for my sculptures. I work with clay and draw inspiration from nature and animals. I combine wood and steel to enhance the sculpture's expression. I'm often identified by my bull sculptures, which are in a way my totem animal: in raw or glazed stoneware, red, grey or black, they are recognizable by their horns and tail, forged in steel in my workshop.
Kingfishers, hummingbirds, seahorses, fish, turtles... are my inspirations: the color, energy and movement of animals fuel my creations. I mix and experiment with enamels to choose the nuance that will give identity to the work.
Finally, I also work to order, creating decorative pieces, lamps, vases and anything else that can be conceived in ceramics.
-Paul Versteeg: Raised in the south of France, Paul Versteeg was entrusted at an early age with the honorable task of executing Marc Chagall's designs for the ceiling of the Paris Opera. After this commission, he went his own way. French painters such as Charles Marq and Brigitte Simon had a major influence on him. This French training is evident throughout his work.
He began as a landscape painter, working like many of the great painters on the chalky coast of Normandy and in Provence, France. Over the last ten years, he has developed a passion for the reflections of the rising sun in his studio on the Amstel in Amsterdam. He skilfully captures subtle nuances of color on canvas, down to the smallest detail. His work seems imbued with "light".
-Karine Benvenuti: I seek to establish a rhythm between light and shadow, empty and full, light and dark, rough and smooth. The wealth of materials I come across (pieces of wall, tree, rock, volcano, stone, metal, snow, water...) inspires my creative research. To create a piece, it's important to be attached to my environment, my culture and my experience, and to be open to the world. Each sculpture, each moment spent with a sculpture, transports me to something else, to another creation, another reflection. That's why each sculpture is unique. It belongs to a specific moment in my life. It represents a stage in my life. A strong emotion must emanate from it, and the viewer becomes an accomplice to this form. It only comes to life through the eyes of another.
Ultimate recognition.

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