Xenithia-Nomade gallery returns to 13 rue de Saintonge in Paris to present a solo exhibition by Jean-Marc Felzenszwalbe. The exhibition runs from 21 to 29 November 2025, with the vernissage taking place on Thursday 20 November from 6pm. The exhibition, consisting exclusively of dry pastels on cardboard, is a dialogue between works created in the 1990s and more recent pieces. With one exception, none of these pastels have been shown in Paris before.
It is undoubtedly difficult to put into words works that favour the formalism of a style combining sparse colours and geometric simplicity. Beyond the plasticity and play of contrasts, the exhibition, as chosen by the gallery, seeks to highlight the harshness and underlying tensions evident in some of the recent pastels. In contrast, the works from the 1990s seem more inclined to inspire reverie and joy.
Three effects come together before our eyes: the artist's affirmation of a personal emotion, the reflection of a historical movement, and the contingencies of an exhibition. The interaction between each of these terms amplifies reflection and the work of the imagination.
The clear division of the surface area evident in both the 1992 pastels and those from 2024 and 2025 serves as a reminder that this creative work reflects contemporary political divisions. This division is constantly intensifying: the increasingly dark colours, in their juxtaposition, metaphorically offer the viewer no means of escape, which was not the case in the large black, grey and yellow pastel from 1990 presented in the exhibition. The forms themselves evoke covering, spreading and flickering.
A pictorial and undoubtedly conscious translation of a collective concern, Jean-Marc Felzenszwalbe's pastels elude the search for unity and compromise in order to highlight a vacant place that is nevertheless essential to all human action: that of hope, which it is good to invoke at a time when it seems to be inexorably receding from our shores.
