THE NEW RENDEZ-VOUS AT VILLA NOAILLES
With several international competitions in fashion, design and interior architecture, the Var art center is adding a new string to its bow, with an annual rendezvous focusing on drawing. Conceived with the support of the biannual magazine The Drawer, this new event will initially take the form of an exhibition.

What does the practice of drawing look like at the beginning of this century? The Villa Noailles attempts to answer this question with a brand-new event entitled "The Drawer. A new generation of drawing". The various artists whose work has been published in vol. 24 The Drawer - Under 25, most of whom are 4th or 5th year students at art schools in France and abroad. This first draft will provide an opportunity to take stock of the practice of this discipline. The following year, the very first "Villa Noailles x The Drawer" competition will feature a dozen artists, one of whom will be the lucky winner of this first edition.

" This will be the sixth competition organized by the Villa Noailles," explains Jean-Pierre Blanc, Director of the Villa Noailles and founder of the Hyères Festival and Design Parade, adding: "It will be open to young artists from art schools around the world, and will showcase a new generation of designers and artists each year in Toulon. This new adventure is in line with what we've done in Toulon in the past with exhibitions on drawing, devoted to designers and artists Nathalie Du Pasquier, Pierre Charpin and Ronan Bouroullec, and also in line with everything we do around design, which is inevitably, at some point, drawn. "

As with all fashion and design competitions, the event would feature an international competition, a jury and a winner whose work would be exhibited in the year following his or her victory. The event will also be supported by The Drawer, the magazine founded by Barbara Soyer and Sophie Toulouse in 2011. We set up this project thirteen years ago," explains Soyer, "to promote contemporary drawing and its various forms of expression. We put out two issues a year, with different formulas, each tied to a generic theme so as not to get bogged down in our selection, while giving rise to a kind of corpus, formed by some thirty guest artists. The idea is to mix nationalities and generations, so as not to lock ourselves into a restrictive identity. We've been taking our place on the contemporary drawing scene for all these years, and then we became a publishing house. "

This exhibition can be seen at the Hôtel des Arts TPM in Toulon, and season number 0 of this project is available in print, in vol. 24 The Drawer - Under 25, which is urgently needed.

" THE DRAWER. A NEW GENERATION OF DRAWING"
HÔTEL DES ARTS TPM 236, BOULEVARD MARÉCHAL-LECLERC, TOULON
UNTIL FEBRUARY 1, 2025
VILLANOAILLES.COM
HDA-TPM.FR/EN