Lucile Gauvain is a French artist currently living and working in Paris. She presents figurative works rooted in fantasy. Using only colored pencils, she delves deep into imagination, embracing surreal narratives and exploring themes of truth and illusion. Inspired by cinema, particularly film set design, she creates fictional worlds that transcend reality.
Lucile constructs an imaginary world beyond reality, depicting the interactions of ordinary people in unconventional spaces while incorporating surrealist elements into her work. This approach examines the fascinating connection between humanity’s need for daily structure and the extraordinary situations and spaces that disrupt it.
The exhibition "HAUT LES CŒURS!" ("Heads High!") unfolds in a vast and unforgiving medieval-inspired visual world, where characters do not appear as triumphant heroes but as exhausted, fragmented, and scarred figures. Their stories are no different from contemporary reality—epics of love and glory written through violence, with protagonists drowned in wave after wave of seemingly new but inherently repetitive news cycles. Their eyes reveal the fatigue of battling against heavy expectations, their bodies bear the weight of social norms. The world glorifies resilience and combat but overlooks wounds and exhaustion.
"HAUT LES CŒURS!" gives voice to those overwhelmed by the weight of existence. It is a denial of melancholy, an exploration of the cost of strength, a moment of inward retreat. It captures that fleeting suspension, a breath taken before plunging back into the struggle, attempting to heal.
This is an expression of vitality—not of conquest, but of survival. It seeks a form of reassurance: in this world where security remains out of reach, one is not alone.