‘[…] Our world is but one world among many. There are countless other worlds, […] [and] every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is.’

  (David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, 1986)

Like the American philosopher, a leading figure in contemporary analytical philosophy, who opened a theoretical door to a universe where countless parallel worlds coexist, all as real and as plausible as each other, Lise Stoufflet transports us into her own universe of all conceivable worlds.

Lise Stoufflet’s first solo exhibition at the Galerie Pact is titled Fabulations – the French term, in psychology, for a tendency to create imaginary narratives, which may be more or less structured and coherent, and to present them as real events. The exhibition has two consecutive parts, each one presenting several groups of new paintings in an oxymoronic confrontation of stylized compositions and dense layers of meaning. Inhabiting a space between the real and the imaginary, Lise Stoufflet’s dreamlike compositions offer an escape from the world we think we know, opening up as many interpretations as there are observers, because they speak to everyone’s individual feelings and emotions.

With their very identifiable style, clear outlines and very personal palette, the apparent simplification of the images encourages viewers to construct their own narrative. While the seemingly calm atmospheres the artist creates can at first make us forget the strangeness of the compositions, an incongruous detail or a physical impossibility will reveal a grey area: the imaginary has infiltrated reality, opening a door to the impossible.

Elements spill out of the paintings and assail the walls of the gallery, so that the imaginary breaks free from the frame and intrudes into reality: tentacles, eyes, playing cards or a starry sky anchor the artist’s fantasies in the concrete world, linking together works in the same series as though they were autonomous universes.

In the first part of the exhibition, a woman and an octopus are the protagonists in an embrace that is enigmatic, tender and sensual. Although it was the Japanese who developed the concept of shokushu gōkan, or ‘tentacle erotica’, in which creatures with tentacles have sexual relations with women – one of the earliest and most famous examples is The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, a print by Katsushika Hokusai (1814) – Lise Stoufflet instead explores, through this reciprocal embrace, a possible communion between humans and nature. Characterised by an apparent calm, these images reveal something mysterious: the fingers of the female figure are themselves like tentacles, and the appendages of the creature descend from the surface into the water.

Lise Stoufflet’s universe expresses not only dreams and the imaginary but also memories, current events and experiences which she approaches with metaphor, turning them into universal images, chosen for their poetic and evocative potential. After passing a group of demonstrators in the street, brandishing placards depicting eyes, the artist included them in her paintings, preserving the mystery of their meaning: some will see them as a dreamlike vision, others will be reminded of a society where scrutiny and surveillance is endemic.

The artist transforms news events into metaphorical and subliminal images. A third series of paintings is underpinned by the omnipresent media images of the many wildfires raging across the planet as a result of climate change: here a fortune-teller asks the viewer to choose one of several cards, one of which is turned up and predicts a coming catastrophe: does this indicate that our fate is already written, or that it can still be avoided?

In her ‘fabulations’, Lise Stoufflet adeptly illustrates Magritte’s statement: ‘I take care, as far as possible, to only paint paintings that arouse mystery with the precision and enchantment necessary to the life of ideas’.