Fairs
For Art On Paper 2026, Galerie La Forest Divonne presents a dialogue between Valérie Novello and Caribaï, two artists whose practices place paper not at the margins of their work, but at its very core. Bringing them together reveals a shared sensitivity to landscape as an inner experience—an immersion, a breath, a memory—rather than a subject to be described. Both artists navigate the threshold between abstraction and figuration, allowing the natural world to surface as an impression, a vibration, or a fleeting presence.
Despite this common ground, their approaches diverge in materiality, gesture, and cultural resonance. Valérie Novello works through crumpling, modelling, and frottage, shaping paper into delicate, aerial forms. Her pieces seem to hover between drawing and sculpture, their fragility echoing the ephemeral sensations of wind, light, or shifting terrain. The paper becomes a living skin, marked by pressure, touch, and breath.
Caribaï, by contrast, anchors her work in inking, collage, and marouflage, engaging in a subtle dialogue with Asian artistic traditions—both in her sources of inspiration and in her handling of materials. Her compositions unfold like landscapes glimpsed through mist or memory, where layers of paper and pigment create depth, silence, and suspended time.
Together, Novello and Caribaï offer two distinct yet complementary visions of how landscape can be felt, absorbed, and reimagined through paper. Their duo presentation underscores the fair’s spirit: celebrating artists for whom paper is not a support, but a world.
