Tireless artist Pierre-Yves Hervy-Vaillant has been investigating the world and nature from his very personal point of view for nearly 30 years. In his works, reality is revealed to our eyes filtered by a sense of magical suspension. Hervy-Vaillant embellishes the elements he photographs or portrays by covering them with tape, painting them a particular shade of green or photographing them behind mirrors or strips of scotch tape. The subjects, landscapes and natural elements blocked by Pierre-Yves on canvas or plate possess, in this way, the added value of multiple points of view and keys to interpretation. Tape treatments, green fluids and chromatic variations produced by specular reflections and light are followed by photographic studies in which the image stands on the fascinating dividing line between photography and painting. When the artist takes his photographs, placing mirrors or scotch tape between himself and the world, he succeeds in creating images that are enigmatic, but at the same time balanced and characterized by an understated elegance. The retrospective exhibition, dedicated by the Art To Design Gallery to Pierre-Yves Hervy-Vaillant, will feature some works made in the 1990s: photographs from the "mirror gold" series, which involves the alteration of natural images, landscapes and human beings by the timeless and evanescent coating of scotch tape, and some everyday objects revitalized by the use of scotch tape, as belonging to archaeology, cocoons of light rediscovered after centuries of darkness. The "objets scotchés" and the elements observed through the filter of the mirror, are enriched by the presence of the light that strikes them and envelops them with a shiny, rarefied halo as if it were itself painting them. The filter of the material, whether a mirror or a tape, is used by the artist as an inescapable starting point for formal rendering and for triggering alternative reflections and moods in the viewer. Observing the world through these materials gives back to things a surprising component that hides them to make them more evident, as if we were looking at them for the first time enraptured by their particular and at the same time natural beauty.

Pierre-Yves Hervy-Vaillant was born in 1955 in Paris where he lives and works. Since the early 1980s he has exhibited in the most important French and European galleries and museums. His works, which are characterized by unusual interventions on the portrayed and photographed subjects, have grown together with Pierre-Yves's personal artistic research.His creative path has given birth to the unique series "portraits-scotch," "mirror gold "and "black gold," which, over the years have been enriched with important formal and conceptual values.