Selected artworks.
Diane Barthélemy
2025 - 2018
Paris, France / New York, US
In 2024, Diane Barthélemy painted a massive bunker on the dunes of Horizon in Cap Ferret, France : the SOLARGATE.
Enveloping the edifice once marked by trauma, replacing its dark history with vibrant reds, blues, and yellows - colors of hope, resilience and positive energy.
Art, in its simplest form, has the power to transform, turning even the most challenging spaces into sanctuaries of renewal.
A red dot marks the entrance to a corridor, gradually transforming the red into shades of orange and yellow. At its center, the SOLARGATE releases solar vibrations, which propagate across the octagonal red surface. The yellow rays unfold, overlapping a three-dimensional blue wave that originates at the base of the building, revealing a cellular form: the spirit.
Initiated in 2021, the SOLARGATE project takes place on the remains of the Atlantic Wall, transforming bunkers of our coasts into positive spaces to enable and nurture hopeful mindsets.
Visible on the dunes of Keremma (Brittany), the dunes of l'Horizon (Cap Ferret), and near Bayonne, this act of transformation unfolds on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. This intervention changes our visual perception of the coastline and invites on positive reflection and future transformations.
Press Sud Ouest
Le Mur de l’Atlantique, 80 ans après : quand les bunkers deviennent des œuvres d’art
On the Breton coast, Diane Barthélemy imagined Porte du Soleil on a cubic bunker from the Second World War.
Primary colors cover the exterior, curves and circular shapes let its square structure disappear; while warm, organic shapes and shades live inside, finding a common origin in a yellow circle painted on the entrance floor. Like a distant lighthouse at sea or a Solar Gate on a rainy day, the building offers the contemplation of a landscape from west to east passing through the north through its three openings overlooking the sea on the dunes of Keremma.
This blockhouse is one in ten on this horizon, one in thousands in France. The Second World War left thousands of these buildings on the European coast of the Atlantic Wall, notably in France where thousands of them lie abandoned, sometimes used as canvases by street artists but too often appearing at the horizon like dark blocks of memories.
Recoloring the blockhouse is a way of overcoming our past. Towards a brighter horizon.
Press Ouest France
Rouge, jaune, bleu… Cette artiste bretonne a recoloré un blockhaus de la Seconde Guerre mondiale
Press Telegram
À Tréflez, une nouvelle vie en couleur pour un blockhaus de Keremma
The Sunflower
Hand Painted
Salon du Made in France 2024
Carreaux du Temple, Paris
Researches on perception and multi-facets consciousness
Silver overprint photographs.
1. Yayoi Kusama Retrospective, Guggenheim - Bilbao 2023
E=mc2, acrylics on canvas, Diane Barthélemy - Cap Ferret 2023
Superimposed 35mm films 2020, 2021.
2. Giardino dei Tarocchi, Niki de St Phalle, Grosseto - Italy 2020
Symbolique des Sens Paintings, Diane Barthélemy, Anse Flamand, Saint Barthélemy - France 2021
The mosaics in Niki de St Phalle's garden offers a multi-dimension approach and infinite interpretations of her creation but also of our gaze on it. These sometimes mirror - sometimes colored squares could reflect the multi-facets of our consciousness.
By associating on the same silver print film, photographs of the mosaic sculptures and photographs of symbolic abstract paintings, Diane Barthélemy researches visual combinations, interpreting the concept of discrete consciousness.
Superimposed 35mm films 2020, 2021.
Raw film development, first take 2020 : Grosseto, Italy - second take same film 2021 : Saint Barthélemy, French West Indies.
Between fantasy and reality, a journey through a Yel/low Dream, a 5-meter fresco brought to life by its characters taking us from New York to Nevada and Arizona through a series of photographs.
Faire Face, 2019 (1)
Performance numéro 1, 2019, video (2)
Résiste, 2019 (3)
A Yel/low Dream, acrylic on canvas, 501 x 210 cm (4)
Lost Arizona, 2019 (5)
Red grief, 2019 (6)
Blues out of the Yel/low Dream, 2019 (7)
Blues origins, 2019 (8)
Where is the seventh?, 2019 (9)
Rest in P, 2019 (10)
28 Avril, 2019, plaster, plastic, 23 x 7 x 7 cm, Edition of 1 (11)
On the coast of Cap Ferret, Diane Barthélemy imagined Horizon on a pentagone bunker used during WWII. A red, blue and yellow structure now replaces a dark vestige on the dunes of the Horizon. From the roof, an intime area is reachable all painted in outremer letting the visitor contemplate the ocean's landscape in a blue feeling capsule.
World War II has left thousands of blockhaus sitting on the European coast of the Atlantic Wall. In France, more than 8000 of them are being abandoned, sometimes the happy free land for street artists, sometimes nature starts covering them but very often they are sitting in the horizon as dark blocks of reinforced concrete filled by beach trashes and broken glass.
Cleaning them and fully recolore them let us reimagine a common horizon on our littorals. These dark blocks reflecting a traumatic period then become a new bright horizon.
SOLARGATE Horizon, Plage de l’Horizon Cap Ferret, France 2021
Creation of a pictorial work for Première Fois, American IPA beer brewed by Fauve Bière.
Development of a visual language to illustrate the glasses of the brewery in Paris, rue de Charonne.
