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« NE ME RETIENS PAS », THE FIRST SOLO SHOW OF INÈS MÉLIA

If Inès Mélia’s work is so fascinating, it is because the artist has the ability to create with the banality of everyday life. Discarded books are transformed into poetic tissue boxes, while cheese is transformed into astonishing ceramic candleholders. The domestic universe inspires her – a muse with which she has fun but always with rigor. 

It is with this lightness that she begins the fall of 2022, inaugurating her first solo exhibition, “Ne me retiens pas,” at the 75 Faubourg Gallery. Accompanied by the curator Jérôme Sans, the young artist continues her research on the world of intimacy and links each of her works to the word – this sequence of letters which, when united, takes on a meaning, sometimes leading to error or ambiguity. 

The creative woman thus finds the support that is dear to her. The book in particular. Superimposed, it becomes a totem in the Ettore Sottsass style. The edges are united and the titles are aligned to create an exquisite frame of words. On the ground, literary works are encircled, exposing a double meaning expression, drawn by the artist. 

Inès Mélia also returns to painting with larger-scale canvases. Pages from the novel La Prisonnière by Marcel Proust are marouflaged, forming a grid, then superimposed to give free and colorful forms, imagined by the artist. A foot of nose to the story, to the confined heroine.  

For Inès Mélia, the word is sculpture. On a book, in totem or painting, or inscribed on a linear statue of eggs, it takes shape and is transformed in the eyes of each. With “Ne me retiens pas,” the artist frees the word from its leaf, with accuracy and malice. 

“Don’t hold me back” – 75 Faubourg Gallery

 75, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Paris 8e From September 9 to October 7, 2022 

Louise Conesa