Galerie Loo&Lou is presenting a selection of paintings by artist Serge Rezvani, mainly large works from the "Repentir" (1962-1992), "Effigies" (1961) and "Blanche" (2000) series, as well as a new series of self-portraits produced in recent months (2022-2023) and presented at l'Atelier.

"There is no new wave, no old wave, no old man, no youth or old age in the world. In the apparent repetition of waves, there are variants each time, and in each variant, a different man. Alone. Who will be born and die just once, one last time, forever, as we say for nothing - but we could say for everything."

While going through the dense and precious documentation provided by Eric Pierrot - a benevolent and wise catalyst for the adventure that follows - one piece of writing caught my attention...

The above text, "The man-wave”, was written by Alain Jouffroy in 1975 for the Serge Rezvani exhibition presented by the Centre Pompidou. For the record, it ended up being held outside the walls of the Centre Culturel du Marais because of a technical delay in lighting the huge behemoth of the Pompidou building.

These first lines seemed to me to have a timeless and therefore current character when I was reflecting, with some difficulty I must confess, on how to approach the presentation of the man who was at once a painter and a draughtsman, a songwriter and a writer. A 'multidisciplinary' artist, as he likes to say, whose longevity makes him a witness to his century.

Of course, without in any way wishing to obliterate any element that makes him who he is, it is drawing and painting that unite the poly-hyphenate artist with the gallery owner that I am.

Serge Rezvani was drawing from an early age and painting from age 16 during the Second World War, before he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in post-war Montparnasse.

Here he rubbed shoulders with many of the artists of the day, including his painter friends Jacques Lanzmann and Pierre Dmitrienko, and sculptor Raymond Mason. Or poet Paul Eluard, who entrusted him with the illustration of the book "Elle se fait élever un palais", a rare work, published in 16 copies and illustrated with his engravings. There is nothing evasive or indecisive about the man-wave described by Jouffroy, simply different forms of expression of the same man who never ceases to surge...

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