PARIS.- Galerie Diurne will open Ratures & Artefacts, a new exhibition by painter and textile artist Marcel Zelmanovitch, on September 17, 2026, bringing together five large-scale “rug-paintings” that turn irregularities, interruptions and visual accidents into the central language of the work. The exhibition will remain on view through November 13 at the gallery’s 45 rue Jacob space in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
For more than four decades, Zelmanovitch has worked at the intersection of painting and textile, exploring what happens when gesture, color, texture and light leave the canvas and enter the physical world of woven material. His practice eventually led him to develop what he calls “rug-paintings”: signed works conceived with the expressive ambitions of painting but realized through hand-knotting and textile craftsmanship.
In Ratures & Artefacts, however, the artist turns his attention toward something less controlled: the mistakes, distortions and unexpected marks that can intrude upon an image.
“What if we retained only what did not belong in the image,” Zelmanovitch asks in the text accompanying the exhibition, imagining what might happen if the accidental elements normally removed or corrected were instead allowed to become the work itself.
The idea has roots in memories of the imperfect television images of his childhood. Zelmanovitch recalls screens that blurred, fractured into lines or suddenly distorted figures moving across them. Heroes such as Ivanhoe and Zorro could momentarily dissolve into zigzags and uncertain forms as the signal failed. Instead of seeing these disruptions simply as technical defects, the artist now recognizes something revealing in them: the possibility that an interruption can expose a different kind of reality.
For Zelmanovitch, the artefact becomes something beyond the artist’s control — an intrusion of the unknown into an otherwise constructed image. The five rug-paintings in the exhibition emerged from drawings in which such disturbances are no longer peripheral details but the principal subject.
Painting transformed through mohair and silk
Material plays an equally important role in the exhibition. Zelmanovitch has chosen mohair and silk for the works, fibers valued for their softness, natural sheen and ability to change as light passes across their surfaces.
The rugs are hand-knotted rather than printed or mechanically woven. Thousands of individual knots gradually turn a drawing into a dense physical object, allowing delicate, hesitant lines to coexist with the weight and presence of the textile itself.
That contrast is fundamental to the new series. Loose, almost fugitive marks appear across meticulously constructed surfaces. What seems spontaneous has been translated through a labor-intensive process in which every knot contributes to the final image.
Among the works reproduced in the exhibition materials are R&A 01, measuring 350 by 250 centimeters and woven in mohair and silk; R&A 02, measuring 200 by 270 centimeters; R&A 03, at 280 by 200 centimeters; and the monumental R&A 07, measuring 300 by 400 centimeters. R&A 08, measuring 260 by 320 centimeters, is hand-knotted in mohair. Their subdued palettes and wandering lines give the compositions an atmosphere somewhere between drawing, erased memory and visual interference.
Some works appear almost like fragments of sketches enlarged to architectural scale: outlines emerge and disappear, forms overlap, and patches of tone suggest traces left behind rather than fully resolved images. The sensual character of the fiber complicates that visual instability. From a distance, the rugs operate as abstract compositions; up close, their surfaces insist upon touch, density and craftsmanship.
A dialogue with sculpture
The exhibition will also incorporate sculptures by Patrick Lainville, creating a conversation between Zelmanovitch’s woven lines and Lainville’s forged steel.
Lainville, who first pursued the line through engraving before turning to sculpture, uses molten steel to create vertical forms in which curves, straight passages and changes of direction remain visible. His sculptures balance mass and openness, allowing the steel itself to become a kind of drawing in space.
Placed alongside Zelmanovitch’s mohair and silk works, the sculptures establish a material counterpoint: softness against steel, patient hand-knotting against the physical force of the forge. Yet both practices share an interest in the line — how it changes direction, establishes structure and defines the space around it.
Four decades between art and craftsmanship
Zelmanovitch founded Galerie Diurne in Paris in 1982 and later established a weaving workshop in Kathmandu, where he was able to experiment more freely with textile fibers, techniques and color.
Since 1990, Galerie Diurne has increasingly approached the rug as an autonomous work of art. Its pieces are designed in Paris and handwoven in Nepal and India, combining traditional craftsmanship with contemporary artistic experimentation.
Today, the gallery operates three spaces at 45, 50 and 52 rue Jacob and presents Zelmanovitch’s work alongside collaborations with artists and designers and collections developed by its own design studio.
With Ratures & Artefacts, Zelmanovitch returns to one of the fundamental tensions that has shaped his practice: the meeting between control and unpredictability. Here, the meticulously made object becomes the carrier of the accidental mark, while luxurious fibers preserve gestures that might otherwise have been erased.
The exhibition opens with a reception on Thursday, September 17, 2026, from 6 to 9 p.m., and will be on view through November 13, 2026, at Galerie Diurne, 45 rue Jacob, Paris 75006. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
