*April 2024

For a fortnight, the artist will be sharing his artistic practice with the carers and residents of Les Vergers de Sésame - a residential facility for people with autism spectrum disorders in Hérimoncourt.

In his paintings, sculptures, installations and writing, Rémy Drouard seeks to capture moments that could hardly be more banal, to highlight the poetic and sometimes comic potential of everyday life.
At Vergers de sésame, painting, drawing and theatre workshops will enable residents to tell their own stories through the small gestures of everyday life. At the end of these experiments, a collective composition will be produced and will become the sketch of a possible fresco to be painted on the building’s new exterior walls.

“I remember perfectly the teenage tradition of waking up a friend on his 18th birthday by dumping huge bags of funny confetti into his bed. Cleaning up, tidying up, or at least the collection that followed the scattering in compact handfuls of these little multicoloured pieces of paper was, in my case, a struggle that lasted several days, and even after months I could still find them in drawers, socks, pencil pots, notebooks, sheets and other interstices of my life.
Ever since then, I’ve found that stains, preferably small and sparse, have a devilishly good look and charm.
Who hasn’t found the village squares touching the day after the bank holidays, with their floors strewn with confetti and cotillions of all kinds?

In my painting, I often use shapes that can be likened to confetti, commas, circles, dots or spots, always coloured. They allow me to adjust the composition of the painting, and have become a kind of automatic drawing, a bit like the one you unconsciously scribble on a piece of paper when you’re on the phone, except that mine have no embellishment, and I like to call them visual anchor points. I find that these little, often abstract, pieces are usually an unconscious reflection of their creator.
During my workshops with the residents of Vergers de Sésame and Maison de Sésame, I’d like us all to build a composition together using these small gestures, with the intention of telling the story of the people who occupy the premises behind these walls. Because even a dot or a line can tell you a lot about someone’s personality.

The 19, Crac and Sésame Autisme Franche-Comté are continuing their collaboration begun in 2019 and supported by the DRAC and the ARS Bourgogne Franche Comté thanks to the Culture/Santé scheme.

artist’s website