AURÉLIE DEGUEST

Aurélie Deguest was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine to a German mother and a French father, both students at the Beaux-Arts de Paris. She grew up in a rich, stimulating artistic and cultural environment. Painting imposed itself on her at a very young age, structuring her career path and pushing her to attend evening classes at the Beaux-Arts university in Paris at the age of sixteen. She went on to earn a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts at Paris VIII in 1989.

Afterwards, she embarked on an independent career that allowed her to continue to learn while facing ever more rewarding challenges. She works in the event industry and on important projects led by film studios. Deguest is a copyist of classical painting where her demand for fidelity to the original work has her spending hours on the same details. As a decorator, she stages the sets she designs and creates. 

Parallel to this, she continues to produce personal work that reflects her experiences and long-term research. She has reached a technical maturity through the mastery of drawing, color, material and light.

In her last solo exhibition Faces at Loo & Lou Gallery in 2015, Deguest explored a powerful and bloodless expressionist figurative style through ten portraits that she painted in acrylic and oil. Far from any physical resemblance, she focuses on a carnal and provocative representation that challenges the gaze, intimidates, and seduces. 

Since then, without ever moving away from her painting, the artist has devoted herself fully to other personal projects. Today she offers us a series of large format portraits entitled Women in prayer. A theme that imposed itself upon the artist after much working introspectively, like many other artists, during the Covid pandemic. She felt the need during this time to find a spiritual approach to what she was creating. These latest works will come into dialogue with Catherine Wilkening's spectacular porcelain Madonnas, thus completing Loo & Lou Gallery's proposal for this 2022 edition of JUSTLX.