Terribly Relevant Art

with Ellen Turner Hall

Suddenly, with fires breaking out all over the Pyrénées Orientales, the  spare landscapes of Valérie Du Chéné  have  acquired a new sense of urgency. “On a perdu le paysage”  was inspired by the  Corbières fire of August 2025. We have lost the countryside  once again in July 2026.

What can you do when everything you hold dear goes up in flames?  What is the response to a scrubland, a hillside,  or a mountain range reduced to  heaps of ashes amidst singed rocks?  If you are the artist Valérie Du Chéné you pick up your brush and pen and record what is left.

Du Chéné’s gouache  landscapes are painted on two pieces of paper with a vertical split between them, while the horizon remains a continuous line. Her palette relies heavily on black with a restrained use of large swathes of bright colours.

The exhibit includes two rocks salvaged from the Corbières after the fire. One is painted white, while the other bears  patches of black and grey,  traced on its surface by the  blaze.

In a series of  black drawings on white paper, Du Chéné  emphasizes  the emptiness  of the natural world, reduced to  a sense of loss and silence.  Her minimal lines suggest rather than design rocks, stones, stars, rain or flowing water, a lesson in understatement.    The artist turns tragedy into a meditation on what remains.

In the words of Du Chéné:

*On a perdu le paysage
mais on va bien.
On a perdu le langage
mais on continue à parler.*

On a perdu le paysage runs from 20 June to 27 September. Open every day 10 – 12 and 14 -18. Galerie du Tenyidor, Collioure.

* We have lost the landscape
but we are well.
We have lost the language
but we continue to talk.