Jean-Luc Verna

For so long, train stations were decorated with paintings of the cities and regions to which the trains traveled. It was a way of anticipating the journey, making it more desirable, or of recalling it. In the departure hall at Toulouse’s Matabiau station, Le Printemps de septembre invites Jean-Luc Verna to revisit this forgotten tradition. Enlarged and printed on synthetic sheets, his drawings are so many imaginary landscapes associated with song titles. The contemporary traveler is a dreamer in movement, often cocooned in a bubble of music while traveling through the countrysides that the trains criss-cross.

Whether he is dancing, singing, being photographed or tattooing his body/sculpture, or even drawing, Jean-Luc Verna is a fascinating figure at the intersection of several contemporary worlds. In the world of art, his corporeal image merges into images of his works. His birds, frightening clowns, threatening faces and landscapes drenched in melancholy form a visual universe whose strangeness hesitates between laughter, hazy concern and cruelty. His natural affinities take hm just as easily toward punk culture as toward "decadent" symbolist artists of the late 19th century.

In partnership with SNCF Gares and Connexions, and with the support of Le Centre d’Art Nomade.