Amélie Bertrand

Exhibition Catalogue Amélie Bertrand. Neon Club, presented at the Musée de Valence (10 october 2026 - 21 march 2027).

Amélie Bertrand presents a brand-new project. Spanning two floors of the museum, the “Neon Club” exhibition reveals new avenues of exploration and new motifs, such as curtains and shop windows, which enrich the artist’s repertoire. Amélie Bertrand also reimagines her painting by incorporating the building’s architecture. She draws inspiration from the spiral staircase, a relic of the Middle Ages, and emphasises the motif of the stone wall, which is ubiquitous throughout the museum and already a recurring feature in her paintings.

What are the curtains concealing, with their subtle gradations of color and from wich an intense light appears to emanate? What are the crackling neon signs proclaiming? If Amélie Bertrand's entire body of work is a realm of deceptive appearances and paradoxes, the radiant landscapes of Neon Club captivate us with their hyper-artificial and indulgent beauty, at once both mythological and digital.

In this garden, where waves are frozen, fruits are suspended on chains, flowers are oversized and water lilies levitate, perfection itself breeds unease. This painting tends towards abstraction, an impure abstraction that never quite severs its ties with the world of things: an abstraction seemingly trapped in ice, frozen for an instant before it melts under the spotlights of the Neon Club.