Art Quam Anima – Pre-opening
Art Quam Anima opens its doors for the first time on rue du Dragon, inaugurating a gallery space where warm birch joinery, woven light fixtures, and weathered stone floors create a setting as considered as the work it holds. This pre-opening exhibition gathers a concentrated selection of paintings and sculptures that embody the gallery's founding vision: art as soul, as breath, as the animating force that transforms matter into meaning. Canvases from the Synesthetic Explorations and Research on Harmony series line the white walls, their chromatic intensities—coral reds, nocturnal blues, luminous yellows—calibrated to the intimate proportions of the space, each painting translating a specific musical key into visual resonance.
The architecture itself participates in the encounter. Birch shelving wraps the walls, creating alcoves that house art books, smaller studies, and intimate sculptural pieces, while the central corridor is punctuated by black steel plinths bearing the larger works. Overhead, organic pendant lamps in woven rattan diffuse a warm, even light that honors both the saturated hues of the paintings and the textured surfaces of the ceramics. The central axis opens toward rue du Dragon through floor-to-ceiling glass, drawing the street into the gallery and projecting the sculptures' silhouettes outward to passersby. Located in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Art Quam Anima proposes a return to slow looking—a space where the boundary between gallery and neighborhood dissolves.
Sculptural works punctuate the central corridor on dark steel plinths. La Mouette de Montparnasse arcs in polished stainless steel near the entrance, catching daylight and casting shifting reflections across the stone floor. Behind it, cream-toned ceramic birds—geometric, almost origami-like—seem poised for flight, their angular wings echoing the birch geometry. Patinated ceramics in earth tones and bronze glazes occupy quieter positions: cubist figures with incised details, stacked volumes suggesting ancient knowledge, forms that reward the sustained attention the space invites. The dialogue between painting and sculpture unfolds naturally as visitors move through—color and form, wall and plinth, warmth and weight.
This pre-opening is both culmination and beginning. The works gathered here represent years of systematic research into synesthetic correspondence and sculptural narrative, yet their installation in this new space opens fresh possibilities for resonance and dialogue. Visitors become witnesses to an origin—the first chapter of a story that will continue through future exhibitions, collaborations, and encounters. Art Quam Anima begins here, in the space between a chord and its color, between myth and the material that gives it weight.
Artist Statement
Opening Art Quam Anima realizes a long-held vision: a space where the work can breathe, where visitors can linger, where the relationship between artwork and viewer can develop without haste. The name itself—Art Quam Anima, art as soul—announces an intention. I believe art functions best not as decoration or investment but as a form of encounter, a meeting between consciousnesses mediated by color, form, and material.
The gallery's design emerged from years of reflection on how space shapes perception. The birch alcoves create intimacy for smaller works and books; the black plinths give the larger sculptures room to breathe; the woven lights honor both the saturated paintings and the textured ceramics; the stone floor and street-facing glass root us in the neighborhood while opening toward the world outside. Every detail serves the encounter between viewer and work.
The paintings in this pre-opening span several series—Synesthetic Explorations, Research on Harmony, Research on Tensions—each canvas translating what I hear into what I see. The sculptures emerged from a different impulse: the desire to give weight to the ephemeral, to hold narrative in three dimensions. Bringing them together in my own space allows me to present them as I have always imagined—in dialogue with each other, with the architecture, with the particular quality of Parisian light that enters through these windows.
This pre-opening is an invitation. Come see what we are building. Come participate in the beginning.
Logistics
Opening Hours: Daily 11:00 – 20:00 (Thursday & Friday by appointment only)
Vernissage: Saturday, January 31, 2026, 18:00 – 21:00
Admission: Free
Address: 28, rue du Dragon, 75006 Paris
Métro: Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Line 4), Saint-Sulpice (Line 4)
Contact: contact@artquamanima.com