WELCOME
After a professional career in human resources, Frédérique Gourdon turned her attention to an artistic quest. Her initial explorations focused on the notions of traces, imprints, and transformations, which she expressed through various mediums such as oil painting, ink, collage, printing, and monotype, until thread became central to her work. .
The traces she seeks take the form of a weave, a new thread explored through line drawing and cotton thread. This thread, which she mixes, intertwines, weaves, constructs, and deconstructs, regardless of the medium, allows her to recount the passages, wanderings, and fragile moments of a life, the wear and tear of time that enriches.
By inviting the viewer to take a kind of stroll, the artist encourages them to change their perspective, to be simultaneously inside and outside of a whole, to become one with their environment while wandering freely through the different layers of time and its impermanence.
In these poetic spaces, the elements interact with each other, mainly on linen or cotton canvases, which are both support and material, omnipresent witnesses to life.
The fabric, a kind of skin in search of reinvention, resembles our epidermis, experienced as both armor and straitjacket, but where ink penetrates the fiber to introduce a new sensory and moving space.
Evoking ephemeral, change, and fragility, her works are inspired by nature and forcefully remind us that our existence is closely linked to the living world. They invite us to connect with the environment that surrounds us.
Born in Paris in 1971, Frédérique Gourdon trained by exploring various techniques, including oil painting, engraving, sculpture, and drawing.
In 2009, she obtained a diploma in workshop facilitation from the Terre et Feu School of Art, which enabled her to teach painting and drawing at a cultural center alongside her research.
A poetic dialogue between ink, paper, and thread began to take shape.
In 2019, her encounter with the “Thefibery” Gallery allowed her to deepen her work. She exhibited the suspension “Flottements” at the International Paper Art Biennale in Shanghai.
Her participation in the Coton et Dissonances exhibition at the Cholet Textile Museum and Miniartextile in Como, Italy, opened up the field of space and volume.
She won the City Prize at the Artcité fair in 2021 with a hybrid work combining drawing and textile volume.
The ANMWA, Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, enabled her to follow a mentoring program in 2021/2022, which strengthened her practice and direction.
In 2022, the MacParis exhibition space gave her the opportunity to stage her work.
In 2023, she held a solo exhibition, “La Force du Fragile” (The Strength of Fragility), at the Pavillon des Arts in Châtenay-Malabry.
In 2024, she won the lacritique.org prize and the Taylor prize for her sculpture “Déployer les points de vues” (Deploying Points of View).