Roma Gallery presents the exhibition Temporal Transferences, where Jean Cocteau’s work intertwines with Mylène Jampanoï’s latest creations. Cocteau’s painting depicts a frontal reflection. One could also discern the moment of seductive anticipation before the Kiss of two identical opposing figures, a description that serves as a counterpart for Jampanoi’s work. The pattern of reflection and mirroring is repeated in his oeuvre. Cocteau reverses any narcissistic suggestion and transcends psychoanalytic negotiations by creating passages and portals to another world.

Jean Cocteau’s paintings are a testament to his ability to weave complex stories through simple visual elements but with narrative depth. The mirror becomes a liminal space between reality and fantasy. It is a medium he uses not only to create symmetry but also to provoke the viewer’s perception. Faces and figures often appear as metaphors, reflected or corresponding in ways that suggest a dialogue between their identities. The exhibition also includes ceramics and drawings highlighting the artist’s fluid work across different media.

Mylene Jampanoi’s forms contain interior and reflect exterior spaces. The body is a multiple reflection, beyond one-dimensional representation, yet its materiality remains. The forms are themselves the liquid mirror, bringing information to the surface or in immersion.

Jampanoi’s work also turns to forms that reconstruct the relationship between the mythological past and modernist origins. References such as Pablo Picasso and the forms of Cocteau are inherent. Jampanoi grew up in the South of France where important modernist artists lived and left their work. She works between countries and also between fields, having set up her studio on the island of Tinos. So it is the light-filled drawings, the sky and the colours of the sea that create the archipelagic and temporal connections and metaphors.

Her gestures of erasure and added layering, internal to the face texture variations and thoughtful application of colour create uncanny, dreamlike portraits that leave a sense of deep delectation. Everything lends a sense of balance while proportions change and gestures recede from the expected. The artist approaches the uncomfortable endearingly; any contraction of the gaze seems part of the poetics of love, a moment of transition that ends in a reverie or grasping of happiness.

Opening: Thursday 12.09.2024 (19.00 – 22.00)

Duration: 12.09 – 12.10.2024

Free Entry