27 Nov 2014

Joanna Concejo at Musée Beurnier-Rossel, Montbéliard, France

The new exhibition series 'Dessiner le monde' (Drawing the World) is starting off with a look at work by the invited artist and illustrator Joanna Concejo, whose immense poetic world embraces both the imagination of children and the curiosity of adults. At the Musée Beurnier-Rossel, Joanna Concejo has created some thirty drawings in colored pencil and graphite, inspired by some of the 'faces from afar' seen in this former town house.

Throughout these drawings, faces with shifting proportions and odd countenances that stare blankly at the viewer are part and parcel of wildly colorful vegetal settings. Man and animal are shown in natural communion and seem to spring straight from fables, legendary stories, or popular literature. In a transgression of the marvelous, Concejo and her work fall between the farandole and the absurd. The artist's graphic style, between curves, shapes and gracefully fluid lines, plain yet bright with color, deploys all its power, situating the drawings in a certain eternity.

In this round of nameless characters, faces of the Beurnier-Rossel family can be made out in drawing after drawing. The young Salomé Élisabeth Beurnier, for instance, appears alone, lost in a pink background and beside a small cut-out evergreen. And Georges David Rossel, the man who had the town house built in the eighteenth century, displays only his fine suit of clothes and powdered wig, his face masked by a lush spray of peonies intruding on the picture. Other notables who have made their escape from the museum collections reappear in bits and pieces. A jacket, a dress, a face, a profile… are these individual recollections buried in the memory of the Montbéliard town house, or do they arise from the artist's own imagination? Springing from collage and montage, playing on the texture of old papers and colored backgrounds, the whole piece placed in a grand old frame, Concejo's pictures use every available means to infuse their materials with a story. Pervaded with memory, they partake of this historical and narrative atmosphere, giving off a timeless poetry that comes from afar.

An illustrated album featuring all the drawings in the 'Visages du lointain' exhibition is jointly published with Éditions Notari (Geneva).


Born in 1971 in Poland, Joanna Concejo, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts of Poznan, has lived and worked in Paris since 1994. Joanna Concejo has created numerous illustrated albuJoanna since 2008.


Dessiner le monde…
Drawing the World…

The new exhibition series Dessiner le monde… will focus on a single invited artist who is especially interested in drawing, collage, figurative art and narrative, with a strong dose of the marvelous as well. The chosen illustrator will create original drawings to be featured during the Christmas market, taking his or her inspiration from the history of Montbéliard, the work of local artisans, objects displayed in the museum, or the family Beurnier-Rossel.

Curator: Aurélie Voltz, director of the Musées de Montbéliard