Galerie Agathe Hélion

When your grandfather is the revered pioneer of French abstract painting, and your great-grandmother, amongst other incomparable feats, revealed Jackson Pollock to the known universe, what chance is there for you to ever make a name for yourself in the art world, without falling back on your famous pedigree?

This is precisely the challenge Agathe Hélion took up. No mean feat for the grandaughter of abstract maestro, Jean Hélion and great-grandaughter of illustrious art collector Peggy Guggenheim. Unsurprisingly, Hélion chose to turn to an art form that neither family member would have heard of (and would have most probably disagreed with). Two years ago, she opened the Galerie Agathe Hélion, dedicated to showing and promoting digital art. In Paris’s academic scene, this is something of a novelty.

“This has always been a passion of mine. I grew up surrounded with modern art, and, perhaps to mark my own territory, I developed an interest in Japanese art as a teenager,” Agathe remembers. “When I was 18, I started to buy work from Japanese artists such as Chiho Aoshima or Aya Takano. My father didn’t understand the attraction, to him it was just manga.”

The shows feature some leading figures of the avant-garde school, who are still very much under-represented in this country. These include Caroline Bénech, who mixes software with fine arts (she paints and varnishes digital prints and cuts them up into various shapes). “This blurs the line between old and new media,” Agathe explains. “It confuses people, they just don’t know how to look at the piece, how to situate it.”
Another protégé is the curator’s own brother, Benjamin Hélion; this classically-trained photographer fell into computer arts, and has won a multitude of prizes. His works range from slick, tongue-in-cheek, fashion shoot-like images to provocative, heavily photoshoped prints. More than a curator, Agathe is rapidly becoming the patron of a new art scene in Paris – could she be walking in Peggy’s shoes?

The shows are always entertaining, and always include a performance with a somewhat political message – the most recent consisted of a young performer screaming out a manifesto about consumerism, whilst standing infront of a blown-up doll; at the same time, sponges were distributed to the audience, who were invited to throw them around the room.

The next show will be held on September 10. This time around, Agathe is working as a duo with her associate Louis Cornette de Saint Cyr. Louis also bears an artful descent – he is the son of the legendary auctioneer Pierre Cornette de Saint Cyr, and has grown up surrounded with art works. The young man is a self-proclaimed computer nerd. “Art used to just annoy me, but I liked technology and science," he says. "This is how I fell into the art world: I just realised the two are far closer than one thinks. This is just the beginning: digital tools are simply tomorrow’s paintbrushes. You’ll see...”

Galerie Agathe Hélion, 63 Boulevard Raspail, 75007 Paris