Exhibitions
2024

Founded in 1982, the Musée du Dessin et de l’Estampe originale de Gravelines is the only museum of its kind in France dedicated to the art of printmaking. It defends the work drawn, printed and edited. The drawings it presents have the particularity of having been conceived on a medium other than paper. They are first executed on the printing matrix, so they are carved in wood, drawn on stone, engraved in copper… Then the image is revealed when printed on the sheet, but this is only the beginning of the exploration of a language and its possibilities. The engraver exploits series, variation, metamorphosis, combination, inversion, narration, repetition… Then he edits the final proof. After all, this art form was designed for the multiplication, distribution and sharing of drawings, much to the delight of enthusiasts. From Dürer’s Apocalypse suite (dated 1498) to engravings by contemporary artists, 27,000 works make up the Musée du Dessin et de l’Estampe originale collection. As works of art are fragile in the light, all exhibitions at the Musée de Gravelines are temporary, and even the collections room is known as the Exposition Impermanente. Every 6 months, the museum is completely emptied and new works are hung. Visitors can discover the richness of this art through temporary thematic or monographic exhibitions. The collections room, meanwhile, offers a didactic tour of printmaking techniques (tools and matrices are associated with the works).

This exhibition at Lille Art up! is an opportunity to highlight some of the many contemporary prints in the collection, with the pretext of “drawing the world”. As the points of view are rich and varied, the choice fell on artists who set the world in motion, whether they are close to cinema or visual storytelling, then artists who react to current events, and finally artists who express their states of mind or intuitions.

This year and for the third year running, Lille Art Up! is offering the public the chance to discover Interface, an exhibition that brings together emerging talents from the new international art scene. Some have galleries, others do not. Some have just graduated from school, others have already established themselves.

This exhibition invites us to discover their works that are most in line with this year’s theme “Drawing worlds“.

Above all, these artists propose a conceptual vision of plasticity and sensitivity through their work on deconstruction.

Ten years ago, Lille Art Up! took the bold step of encouraging young artists from schools in the Euro-region by reserving them an exhibition. Since then, Revelation by Lille Art Up! has become one of the must-see events of the fair. This year, the ten or so winners, selected by the fair’s artistic committee, have explored the theme of the edition. Their works offer a surprising variation of the theme Drawing worlds through photography, engraving, painting, plexiglass sculpture, video…