Vanitas: Emilie Picard

Vanitas

March 23–May 13, 2023

Daniela Mercuri is pleased to present Vanitas, an exhibition of new paintings by the French artist Emilie Picard. This will be her first gallery presentation in the US. The show opens with a public reception on March 23, from 6–8 pm, and is on view through May 13, 2023.

Emilie Picard’s work is uniquely poetic and reflects universal overarching themes that bridge antiquity, renaissance, and contemporary painting. Her interest in the passage of time and the fragility of life can be traced back to Classical antiquity, when Plato, Seneca, and many others meditated on death and mortality. The Stoic Marcus Aurelius invited the reader to consider how ephemeral and mean all mortal things are in his meditations.

Picard’s take on the transience of life is conveyed through her elaborate depictions of the detritus weaved in colorful, yet muted background landscapes. Brokentoys, hanging electrical cords, deflated balloons, and sun umbrellas are some of her favorite subjects. Sun umbrellas have a particular recurrence in her work–as is the feeling of being bleached by the sunlight that permeates her work.

It connects Picard to the biblical texts of Ecclesiastes with his repeated mention of the sun as the only constant and the general futility of life.

Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil

at which he toils under the sun?

The sun rises, and the sun goes down,

and hastens to the place where it rises.
...What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done,

and there is nothing new under the sun.

The themes of Vanitas originate from this Ecclesiastic text that has a long and illustrious past in the history of painting. The collections of objects that emphasized the inevitability of death, the transience of life, and the vanity of earthly achievements usually consisted of sculls, manuscripts, and various related paraphernalia. Picard takes this timeless subject and elevates it to the contemporary realm, depicting discarded toys, trash, random pieces of clothing, and various remnants of human activities.

Vanitas ran from March 23rd, 2023, through May 13, 2023, and the gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.