Exhibition text by Anne-Laure Lemaitre.

In LOA (Leave Of Absence) Sarah Favreau explores intimacy in the landscape of trauma through the use of color as a physical, palpable emotional space.

For centuries, the space delimited by the frame of the canvas has been an entry-point to other universes represented on its surface, a window into descriptive spaces of wonder for their viewers to explore. This simple, universal format has been through time the vessel for (visual) revolutions and stylistical, philosophical, sociological shifts.

But more than a surface, a canvas is an object. An object the structure of which inherently shapes the matter it supports.

This relationship between armature and surface, between physicality and an emotional understanding going beyond the mere materiality of the object-canvas itself is core to Sarah Favreau’s practice. Their works function as emotional landscapes, spaces of wander in which to lose oneself in the interstitial balance between the object-container and the physical and fictional territories it creates.

The canvas morphs and permutes back and forth from window to body, its surface becoming resolutely carnal without ever renouncing its ability to carry us further inwards into ourselves. Sarah’s paintings are intimate spaces of belonging where their viewer meets themselves where they are at that specific given time.

This body of work, which investigates the intuitive relationship between color, form, and light was rooted in an exploration of their maker’s personal trauma.

We live in a continuous loop, a cycle and ecosystem which goes from life to death, with death not as an end point but as the start of other/different life forms. LOA (Leave Of Absence) is a presentation about renewal, about aridity and hardship as the potential soil from which one can re-grow.

As one walks through the space on a layer of dry clay crackling under their feet, they see their surroundings evolve, shifting slowly from light to darkness, from neutral tones to colorful hues. The paintings, directly visually impacted by this transient lighting, can only exist as themselves shortly before being further influenced by their environment.

The room functions as a reminder that life itself will always find a way. From the ashed grounds of wildfires in Southern California will grow poppy fields. From the diehard times we’ve faced can blossom a life anew.