News

The Fondation is currently closed. It will reopen on October 9th for the "Gustave Fayet, Collector - Designer. Icons of Modern Art" exhibition".

Flyer and the Seed

  • 2022
  • Megan Rooney
  • Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas
  • 199,6 x 152,3 x 3,5 cm

This painting gave its title to Rooney’s first solo exhibition in France, *Flyer and the Seed*, presented at the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in the Paris Marais in 2023. It was created at the end of winter, in dialogue with the changing light of the London sky. The surface is built up through gestural layers, abrasions and successive sanding. Rooney describes his process as a digging towards the heart of the painting, before becoming “like a bird flying over the surface”: a metaphor that the title itself extends.

The "flyer" and the "seed" evoke dispersion, lightness and germination — a cycle of creation and renewal characteristic of Rooney’s practice. The work remains abstract yet allows anthropomorphic silhouettes to emerge.

“This painting came into being with the first signs of spring’s arrival. It is the title of this body of work and signifies the return of the line to my practice. I often look for places to land on the surface when I’m hovering above the canvas – here, the painting extends beyond the edges of the canvas as I imagined the movement floating in the magical space that belongs to the viewer.” Megan Rooney (in QA)

Crédit artiste : © Megan Rooney, 2022 Crédit photographique : © Primae / Louis Bourjac

Megan Rooney

Born in South Africa, Megan Rooney spent part of her childhood in Brazil before moving to Canada, and then settled in London, England, where she has lived since 2014. In her works, she sets the paint in motion, both on canvases and on walls. Regardless of the medium or format, the act of painting is a physical, almost performative endeavour, which culminates in her monumental paintings.

In 2022, Megan Rooney took over a room at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, blending painting, architecture and performance during the exhibition La Couleur en fugue to create a non-figurative pictorial landscape that nevertheless remains rooted in an evocation of reality. Using a variety of tools, the artist painted directly onto the walls, creating an immersive space of vibrant colours that responded to the body’s movements in harmony with the venue. Atmospheric and geological in nature, her works are the result of a lengthy process involving various media (oil, acrylic, pastel). The artist revisits her fluid or denser colours—whether in acrylic or oil—using pastels to draw lines and transform her painting. Megan Rooney explores the richness of a vibrant, colourful palette, whose shades blend into harmonious or dissonant combinations. In her works, one can even discern allusions to real spaces or to nature.

Read more