Catherine Ursin was born in the countryside in the 1960s.
She is a visual artist with multiple practices (painting, sculpture, poetry, performance, video, textile arts, installations).
She lives between Paris and her various artistic residencies (France, Belgium, Senegal, England…).
She graduated with honors from the D.N.S.E.P at the School of Fine Arts in Angers in 1987.
As an illustrator and graphic designer for the press, publishing, and museums, she gave up her computer in 2000 to go back to ‘material’ : metal, paint, and recycling.
She is nfluenced by marginal artistic movements : the decadents, punk, minority women artists in the art world (from Artemisia Gentileschi to Kae Tempest), Gutai, Butoh, Art Brut… she creates with urgency and fury.
In 2010, Galerie La Rage in Lyon hosted her first solo exhibition, My Grandmother Came Out of Her Grave or the Sacrifice of Women, on violence against women.
From cutting metal to the performance experience, and through the pictorial gestures on large-scale formats, the ‘body’ becam her focus. Her recent researches question the human species and their relationship with living beings through hybridization, symbiosis, and fusion to achieve species equality using a new tool : the Bic pen.
Turbulences
« Without TURBULENCES, there’s no life !
Without life, no TURBULENCES !
I’d like to know how to say the word TURBULENCE in all the languages of the world and beyond, even in extinct languages, even in those that don’t exist yet !
Without TURBULENCES, no emotion arises.
TURBULENCES make me sing, dance, laugh, and create.
So… Turbulate me until my limbs scatter so I can rebuild myself.
Turbulate me until nausea so I can vomit my gall.
Turbulate me until outrage so I can fight.
Turbulate me until I hit the ground so I can get up with pride.
Turbulate me until I’m bewildered so I can shed warm tears.
Turbulate me until I’m suffocating so I can finally breathe fresh air.
Turbulate me, Turbulate me, Turbulate me.
Turbulate me, or I’ll turbulate you. »
Catherine Ursin, 2026
The Art of Monsters
or the Enchantment of the Visible and the Invisible
« Necessarily beautiful, monsters are the sudden figures of reality. The anguish of being, the tragedies of the world, and sexual terror fertilize them. The unknown is their territory. If reality, over time, is hardly manageable – the slightest virus overwhelms it – it remains an illusion, and the universe will maintain until the end of human times the relentless presence of the unthinkable. All the mythologies of the world are populated with monsters, brothers of otherness who mark the distance between humans and nature, and other gaps deepen the abyss… To the violence of the universe respond the symbolic and controlled violences of art. Exorcism through creation.
The plural and polymorphic monster embodies the incredible power of instincts and trashes all creations of seriousness, from medieval gargoyles to harsh contemporary works. Chaos watches over, and humans don’t stand a chance against the formidable energy of a nature that can never be controlled, even in the human underworld… The monster cancels out the perfection of so-called divine order. It comes from the night of the cosmos, even when it faces the light of day. The space where the monstrous being sheds the ordinary body is full of hidden dangers.
All ‘monstrous’ art lies in this ability to bring together formal brutality and a multiplicity of meanings, even liberating nonsense, into a single erect entity, the monster, a failed sublime creation, from Dracula to Trump. Acting like a seismograph of the most intimate self, the artist experiments with the rawest staging of the most active emotions. The monster is their double, and the monstrous is their mirror. A risky and sublime journey into the unconscious, from Gérard Alary to Unica Zürn, from Lydie Arickx to Vladimir, from Sandra Martagex to Catherine Ursin. This is how reality is tamed, and the artist is a fragile savior. »
Christian Noorbergen, 2020
SOLO SHOWS (selection since 2014) :
2026
«Turbulences», Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris.
2025
«Fête un rêve avêq Chomo», village d’art préludien de CHOMO, Les amis de Chomo & Patrimoines Irréguliers de France, Achères-la-Forêt
2024
«Résister est un verbe qui se conjugue toujours au présent», Maison du Patrimoine, Festival «Y’a tout ça» de Villard-de-Lans
2023
«Tu me veux blanche, je ne suis que noire et rouge», galerie La Rage, Lyon
2021
«Vous êtes une fleur que le monde ne veut pas laisser vivre», exposition évolutive en 5 mouvements, Manufacture des Tabacs, Université Lyon3 & 9BHN
2019
«Brader la nuit et piquer le soleil», Galerie 29, Évian-les-Bains
2018
«Écritures», Galerie d’un livre l’autre, Paris
2016
«Marquage(s)», installation photographique, 39/93, Romainville
2014
«Otium, renouvellement du corps, de l’âme et de l’esprit», Galerie In Situ, Label Friche, Nogent-le-Rotrou
GROUP SHOWS (selection since 2014) :
2025
«Quand L’Art crée du lien», Maison du gardien, Valence
«Exposition collective #1», L’Orbise, Pont d’Hérault, Cévennes
2024
«Attribut(s) de 5 à 7», exposition et édition d’un livre avec Jaky La Brune et Geoffrey Kayser, Sterput, Bruxelles, Belgique
«L’art en mouvement. En mouvement ? Vers l’art ?», Parc Jouvet, Maison Du Gardien, Valence
«L’enfance de l’art», exposition collective, Point Rouge Gallery, Saint – Rémy de Provence
«Art brut Rendez-vous», galerie Laurent & Laurent, Espace Cinko, Paris
«Crois-moi», avec Fabien Lewartowski, L’art au 36, Montreuil
2023
«Nuit Guédée», avec Anne Van der Linden, Le Kale Be Beat, Saint-Denis
«Les espèces en voie d’apparition», Chapelle de la Visitation de Brioude, Haute Loire
2022
«Carcasses», Action Hybride, 100 ecs, Paris
2021
«Brut(e)s & Singuli(è)r(e)s», Galerie Laurent & Laurent, Nice
«Les Croquemitaines», Galerie 29, Évian-les-Bains
2020
«MAP DANSE ANBA LA PLI – Focus Grand Rue», commissariat, C. Ursin, Studio Boissière, Montreuil
2019
«Vacarmes silencieux», Point Rouge Gallery, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
2018
«Ouvrir les peaux du diktat», La chapelle Saint Anne, Tours
2017
«Sous les étoiles», Médiathèque Grain de sel, Séné
«Vision de l’âme», 7BHN, Wuhan, Chine
2014
«Mycélium – Génie savant, génie brut», commissariat, Laurent Danchin, Abbaye d’Auberive
COLLECTIONS :
Bibliothèque de Neuchâtel – Suisse
Manufacture des Tabacs, Université Lyon 3
Musée Art et déchirure, Rouen
Musée-Galerie associatif singulier-brut-expressionniste, Dieulefit, Drôme
Collection Marc et Marie Moulaire – Collection FIMAC, Fonds d’Investissement Mutualisé d’Art Contemporain, Paris
FIAA, Fonds International d’Art Actuel, Le Mans
Galerie Robert Poulin, Montréal, Canada
Musée d’Art Contemporain Singulier, Mansonville, Québec, Canada
Collection M. et L. Oster
Fonds permanent, Galerie Eqart, Marciac
Arthotèque Babart, Argilliers
Collection du Hang-Art, Association ABBAC, Saffré
Ville de Bondy
Fonds de livres d’artiste de la Médiathèque des Ursulines, Quimper
Collection Patrick Cady, Québec
Collections privées internationales
HELP FOR CREATION & SUPPORT :
2024
Research grant, Spring 2024, ADAGP, project “Living the Absence”
2023
Your skin will be my skin, (video 4:25), directed by Samuel Alerte, Bergerie de Soffin, ADAGP support fund, grant for video recording of an artistic performance
2020
Support from the Antoine de Galbert Foundation for the exhibition of Haitian artists, “MAP DANSE ANBA LAPLI,” curated by Catherine Ursin
