Gwendoline Finaz de Villaine “Caviar Ink”
A Solo Exhibition
Opening Reception
October 24, 2024
6pm-8pm
Exhibition on View
October 24 – 27, 2024
The Untitled Space
45 Lispenard Street, NYC 10013
“This October, I declare my love to New York City. Through a surprised fresco in Central Park called “The Flame”, we are extending the Olympic Games in France while celebrating the 400 years anniversary of New York City. I thought of this work as an explosion of joy, a way of paying homage to the Franco-American friendship through a symbol of light initiated in 1886 with the Statue of Liberty.” – Gwendoline Finaz de Villaine
On October 19, 2024, Gwendoline Finaz de Villaine unveiled a large-scale ten-by-five-meter fresco in the heart of New York’s Central Park. This will be followed by an exhibition at The Untitled Space gallery in Tribeca from October 24 to 27, 2024. The exhibition will include the painting “The Flame” and will feature a number of other paintings created by the artist since her arrival in New York in 2023.
Gwendoline Finaz de Villaine’s pictorial work is influenced by her musical performer experience, surrealism, and Asian art. Passionate about the relationship between East and West, she has been developing since 2019 a personal pointillist technique, combining small circles with a mineral and organic universe, that she named “Caviar ink”. It has become her pictorial signature. The artist connects to her unconscious to express these spidery motifs on canvas, in the manner of Yakuza tattoos. This Caviar Ink technique is mixed with mysterious symbols (swimmers, dancers, doves) that question the mystical connections between the visible and the invisible.
Large black and white canvases pay homage to the eternal femininity. Pastel works, vibrant and musical, radiate a festive, cosmic joy. Caviar Ink also highlights a series of small drawings made during the artist’s stay in Long Island. These paintings testify to the influence of Surrealist practices in Gwendoline’s work.
Each painting is an open window on the artist’s unconscious, a journey into the meanders of the imaginary, between the real and the fantastic. In contemplating them, the viewer is invited to lose himself in a maze of symbols and hidden meanings. The link with urban environment is essential to the painter’s approach.
“The only thing I’m convinced of is that Art shouldn’t be confined to galleries and salons. Painting isn’t there to look pretty and sit quietly in a corner. Art has to take the streets by storm.” – Gwendoline Finaz de Villaine
Artist Bio:
Gwendoline Finaz de Villaine is a versatile French artist celebrated for her work as a painter, singer, and writer. A former student of Maîtrise Radio France, Sciences Po Paris, and HEC, she has collaborated with notable figures such as Michel Fugain, Elie Chouraqui, Roger Louret, and Jean-Claude Camus. Her singing career includes performances at prestigious venues like the Folies Bergère, the Zénith, and on French television networks, as well as starring in various Parisian musical productions.
As an author, Gwendoline has published a three-volume saga, Les Brumes de Grandville, followed by a fourth novel, De Poudre, de Cendre et d’Or, released in January 2019.
In 2021, she created a monumental fresco at Sorbonne Universités to highlight student food insecurity and was later selected to paint vat no. 8 at Les Carmes Haut-Brion winery. She also crafted a commemorative fresco for HEC Paris’s 140th anniversary.
Her exhibitions have taken her to renowned venues such as the Grand Palais, the Sichuan Art Museum, and even Place du Panthéon, where she has honored figures like Joséphine Baker through large-scale installations. Her work spans solo shows at Ellia Art Gallery in Paris and The Untitled Space gallery in New York, as well as group exhibitions around the world. In 2023, she represented France at the Sichuan Art Museum as part of a prestigious cultural exchange. Most recently, in 2024, she unveiled The Hanging Garden at the Lycée Français de New York, a fresco created with recycled materials in collaboration with students. Gwendoline is currently represented by Ellia Art Gallery in Paris, marking her as a distinctive figure in the contemporary art world.
