Caroline Demangel was born in 1972 in Remiremont, Vosges, France. She began drawing in 2008 during a hospitalization. The act of making art gave her a newly found freedom for creative and emotional expression.

Demangel relates the following:

When I was recently (re) hospitalized, the patients, with all their quirks and idiosyncrasies, inspire me deeply without me even realizing it. 

Figurative characters are always very important to me, as they allow me not to feel alone. For example, I create a "standing man", a bit like creating a presence, another self, a friend, a double. 

The staging in my work is also very important. It's a question of dancing to the music and, depending on the rhythm, letting it take hold of me until I find the right gesture. Opera helps me a lot. 

It's also a question of material staging, since the orderly arrangement of my pencils, pastels and acrylic tubes is important to me. 

Because more than anything else, there's the impulse, which can't be prepared for, can't be intellectualized, can't be expressed in words, and can't be represented in any way. There's the urgency and necessity of pictorial language, a sort of ribambelle (multitude) of signs, knots, guts, nuclei (the inside of the body is very present) and sometimes words come to me that stand between the sheet and me, asking me to inscribe them. 

When I'm working, there really is something transcendent, something "greater than myself", a great spirit that allows the "perfect" gesture, just right. 

I connect to that which I don't know elsewhere, outside the place of work, and it guides me. Sometimes I have the impression of executing a work that doesn't come entirely from me. A message to be delivered.

Sixteen years later, despite setbacks, Demangel pursued painting as though her life depends on it. Drawing is a perfect medium for her, allowing her to capture moods and states of mind even if fleeting.  Characters intertwine; they duplicate. Her lines create multiple facets bringing often contradictory emotions to the surface simultaneously. The colorful abundant images produce sparks, and impose themselves on us with free and powerful expression.

Caroline Demangel exhibited regularly at Gallery Polad-Hardouin, Paris, and with Cavin-Morris Gallery since 2015. Her work has been exhibited at Halle St. Pierre, Paris, and has been included in dRAW, an Intuit exhibition organized by Jan Petry in 2015. This is her first solo exhibition at Cavin-Morris Gallery.

For additional information please contact info@cavinmorris.com or call us at 212-226-3768.