Catherine François
This attention to the present—to what is happening right now—is rooted in a sensitive observation of natural phenomena: erosion, accumulation, alteration. The materials carry this memory within them, whether raw or reworked. They become witnesses to time at work, but also to a human presence that, too, leaves its imprint.
Oscillating between abstraction and suggestive figuration, the sculptures occasionally reveal echoes of human forms—fragments, faces, silhouettes—without ever fully settling into them. They open a space for interpretation in which the viewer’s gaze is invited to wander, to project, to feel.
In a context of ecological upheaval and the redefinition of our place within the living world, just now resonates with particular acuity. The exhibition invites us to slow down, to observe, to pay attention to what is immediately there—and to question the way we inhabit the world.
For in Catherine François’s work, matter is never inert: it is traversed by forces, charged with histories, inhabited by tensions. And it is precisely in this moment—just now—that its poetry reveals itself.
With just now, Catherine François invites us into a world where matter becomes language, trace, and presence. Driven by a constant tension between humanity and nature—between systematization and organicity—her work explores the conditions of their coexistence in the world. She encourages us to grasp a suspended moment—a “now,” dense and fleeting—where forms, textures, and forces in play reveal a subtle poetry embedded within the very heart of materials.
The artist’s work unfolds at the threshold between appearance and disappearance. Her sculptures seem to emerge from an organic process, as though revealed rather than constructed. The gesture does not impose itself; it accompanies, it listens. To engage with matter is to accept its resistances, to follow its lines of force, to embrace its transformations.
At the core of this approach lies an essential, almost constitutive tension: that which opposes—and connects—humanity and nature. On one side, a form of systematism, structure, a will to control; on the other, the organic, the unpredictable, the ever-changing living world. Catherine François’s works do not resolve this duality; they bring it into relation. They make visible its coexistence—sometimes fragile, sometimes conflictual, often unbalanced—bearing the marks of a relationship to the world that can be both attentive and destructive.
