Florence Manlik's Intimate Drawings and Journals Reveal Private Thought Process at Marseille Exhibition

Florence Manlik's exhibition 'Dessins et doubles pages' at the Centre international de poésie Marseille presents drawings and journals never intended for public display. The artist, born in 1967 in Mulhouse, left the contemporary art world in the late 1990s for fashion, creating these works in the margins of daily life. Using only a fine felt-tip pen, she fills notebooks with written thoughts and drawings that blur boundaries between writing and visual art. Six notebooks from 1999-2001, created during undisclosed biographical circumstances, feature microgrammes that reference Robert Walser's seemingly illegible but narrative writing. The exhibition includes 12 ink-on-paper drawings from 2015-16 measuring 12.5 x 12.5 cm, plus the film 'Je feuillète' by Gilles Weinzaepflen from 2021. Curator Sally Bonn's accompanying text notes the shared etymology of drawing and writing in the Greek word 'graphein,' highlighting how Manlik's work exists at the intersection where thought chooses between temporal and spatial expression. The exhibition runs through November 6, 2021 at La Vieille-Charité in Marseille, presenting what critic Jean-Christophe Bailly describes as thought thinking itself without instruments. Manlik's practice demonstrates how private notation becomes artistic expression through persistent line work that gives form to organic abstractions and body fragments.