Hôtel Barrière Le Gray d’Albion

Ink and paint in the skin

The Hôtel Barrière Le Gray d’Albion, under its director Myriam Descarpentry, has been running a series of cultural events celebrating all forms of art in connection with the town’s iconic glamour status.

Par Pauline Weber

Olivier Domin, aka OLLL, starts the ball rolling with a variety of cheerfully offbeat paintings on the walls of the reception area and restaurant. With this first exhibition, Evolving, the Gray d’Albion signals its commitment to supporting artistic creation.  Domin is close to the Sète school and the ‘Figuration Libre’ movement. Tactfully self-mocking, frequently referencing the collective imagination, he uses photos of celebrities and other familiar images which he revamps in his own way with splashes of colour or mismatched images, such as the cabbage stuck onto a bust of Elvis Presley (as in the Gainsbourg song Tête de chou). Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Sigourney Weaver and Pablo Picasso all get the OLLL treatment, as does Greta Garwig (OLLL makes an artwork in honour of each year’s Cannes film festival jury chairperson). But also many an unknown, like the two 1950s tennis women lighting up ciggies between sets. What makes all these figures so eye-catching is that OLLL has amply and joyously tattooed them. The artist particularly likes this symbolism and has been using it for decades. “I have created a technique of injecting acrylic ink with a syringe and adding a hardening varnish. This creates unusual effects,” he explains. He performs this work with the precision of a goldsmith. “Sometimes I almost stop breathing,” he laughs. “My version of Caravaggio’s Bacchus took me more than 150 hours.”

38 rue des Serbes, 06400 Cannes

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