The gallery Magda Danysz hosts from January 8th to February 26th a chic and rock exhibition, about painting, feelings and breaking limits. Some young trendy painters decide to face each other, their masters or their devils. Chase the Dragon gives us the opportunity to see on the one hand the works of several young painters, fixated on surpassing themselves: Kosta Kulundzic, Axel Pahlavi and Jérôme Zonder. And on the other hand, the already stars of the profession: Larry Clark, Dado or the filmmaker Gaspard Noé.

Chase the Dragon refers to the “high” you get the first time you try a drug. The drug will slowly become an obsession and will lead you into a never ending quest for that shiver you got the first time. Painting becomes a drug, the sensations it gives are so intense but at the same time hardly distrainable. Each artist inhales the world to spit it back out like one does with opium and creates works that are drug shots for him, intense.

These artists build an eccentric world; they paint their own world, but without following classic conventions. Their works shout at us, we can’t just ignore them. Some are quite extreme like the dark and tortuous world of Jérôme Zonder, others are mystical like Axel Pahlavi’s or funnily gore as Kosta Kulundzic’s dragons. From the frontal impact of Larry Clark’s photographs, to the disconcerting experiments in Gaspard Noé’s films or the Dado’s powerful works, all these artists are looking for the creative shiver, as intense as the first time.

The both sweet and violent fuite en avant in this quest for the absolute feeling guides their painting and reveals new colors and power. In this exhibition artists explore their own universes as if they were hallucinations. Contrary to Serge Gainsbourg who asked the Enfants de la chance not to touch the dragon, this exhibition’s artists chase it and attempt to reach their own Nirvanas.

Opening on Saturday, January 8th, 2011 from 6pm to 9pm.