Cartography of the Senses

Cartography of the Senses

Exhibition from September 10 to October 15, 2026
Opening reception: Thursday, September 10 at 6:00 PM

In this series of Landscapes, Catherine Mainguy develops an ink-based practice that is less concerned with representation than with experience. The forms that emerge on the paper do not depict an identifiable landscape; rather, they evoke the experience of moving through one, like an inner passage—fragile, shifting, and in constant transformation.

Each work functions as a threshold. Ink flows across the surface, carried by water, spreading and transforming, partially escaping control. Within this dialogue between gesture and matter lies an essential dimension of play: allowing things to emerge, welcoming the unexpected, and recomposing with what appears. Painting thus becomes a form of re-creation, in the sense of an ever-renewed beginning.

This playful and experimental relationship to material resonates with the thinking of Robert Filliou, for whom art is a space of freedom, invention, and play, capable of generating alternative forms of economy. Here, value is measured neither by production nor by market exchange, but by the quality of attention given to process, time, and relationship. Water, ink, and the gaze participate in the same movement of circulation, through which the work is both made and allowed to happen.

These landscapes may also be understood as interruptions in the continuous flow of images. They suspend the apparent certainty of reality and open spaces of perception in the making, where other imaginaries become possible. The landscape is no longer presented as scenery, but as an experience to be traversed.

Presented as part of the Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale, these works take part in this passage “from one dream to another.” They invite viewers to journey through sensitive geographies, where the gaze—engaged in a slow and open attentiveness—becomes itself a space of transformation.