Bruisse L’eau is Camille Bernard’s first exhibition. In collaboration with Simon Lahure, an artist and musician, they immerse the space in an ethereal and atmospheric ambience. Both painting and music become tools in the service of this atmosphere: the figures in the paintings take up instruments, play music and sing in an aquatic world, whilst the sound piece plays the sound of flowing water.

In her paintings, the artist depicts an intellectual and spiritual ideal where nature is personified and coexistence with humans is balanced in a sustaining and contemplative harmony; harvest/nature, tradition/ritual, nature/community, abundance/necessity, to use the painter’s own words. New forms of earthly sustenance are presented—more inclusive, less gendered—represented by these cocoon-like bodies, these human wombs. They live collectively; duos, trios and groups caress, embrace, kiss and unite. Despite the impression of weightlessness, their forms are solid, heavy, and become, for one another, a refuge, a home, without any structure or building. In a reimagined proportion, where hands are as imposing as feet, these humans are redeveloping their mythological appearance.

Conceived as an extended narrative, each canvas unfolds a different fictional setting. At dawn or dusk, the figures harvest crops, delicately pick flowers, and, in the style of ikebana, create linear, suspended forms. Sometimes, the floral arrangement becomes a shelter and a source of food. Sheltered within, caught between gentleness and voracity, the intertwined figures feed on their creation, communing with the sky, the earth and humanity.

Beyond the canvas, Camille Bernard creates an expanded painting, as part of a wider universe brought to life during the exhibition. With a theatrical flair, she constructs papier-mâché sets, makes films and short sketches in which her characters come to life. Immersion is thus taken to its logical conclusion and unfolds across various media, with the aim of ‘pretending’ together, of believing in it together. The artist creates a parallel, absolute, all-encompassing world, and appropriates esoteric elements used to condition the visitor into a certain state. The paintings serve as gateways into a narrative where care, tenderness, and physical and spiritual encounters prevail.