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The Drawer #13 – Amour

excerpt
All you need
Barbara Soyer & Sophie Toulouse
(p. 7)

A lot of body, a good amount of heart and mind in this thirteenth volume of The Drawer subtitled Love. Stirred up and mulled over in every which way. Everything is mixed up. The subject demands it. Love, that grand affair of life, and of art too. There had to come the time to pause and let feelings speak.
Love with a capital V is heard. As in a variety of possibilities, mediums, figures, and eras, from Picabia to Louise Sartor, Etel Adnan to Jan Melka on the cover of this issue. Carnal, spiritual love, love for the other, for the self, for nature… For everyone, the pleasure to make and to represent.
Love with a capital E too, like Eros. The raw pop representations by the pioneering American artist Dorothy Iannone rub shoulders here with the cineaste Sébastien Lifshitz's sketches inspired by gay Tumblrs. Thomas Huber's erotic, pastel watercolors come before candy pink illustrations by Roxane Lumeret. Laure Prouvost makes breasts and bottoms speak to better distract us from the rest.
Fluids circulate, logically. There are the Vases communicants et pompe aux restes (Communicating Vessels and Pump for the Leftovers) by the young artist Io Burgard and flows of all kinds by Ashley Hans Scheirl, to whom we dedicate a portfolio in this issue. The former filmmaker, since become Hans, was invited to participate in the most recent Documenta in Athens and Kassel. At once political and personal, her drawings and paintings bring together the energy of libido and power, economic and sexual domination, the body of the artist and the social body, in a critical and queer reading of the contemporary world. And then there is waiting, languor. The fervor of Un soir d'amour (An Evening of Love), a strange story of whiskey, a young lady, and an asparagus end, by the chef Yves Camdeborde.
Words and mouths. A few kisses. Everything that makes love or the image we've made of it.
We come across a few first names, of course: Wilma, Eliot, Nora, Milo. And Germaine (Everling), the partner of Francis Picabia from 1919 to 1932, whose face brings to a close the special insert consecrated to the artist and his drawn portraits that disrupt the idea of beauty. Some fifteen modern masterpieces, resolutely masculine-feminine.
Finally, there are some flowers. Cacti in the studio, a washed-up rose, and a selection of plants and bouquets that François Olislaeger has drawn every day for almost two years, thinking of Lila, his young daughter. A flower a day. All we need.
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