September 24, 2026 – November 9, 2026

Opening: Thursday September 24, 2026 h. 18.00

Bertrand Loubé

The Cut-Outs

curated by Melania Andronic

Colombo’s Gallery presents The Cut-Outs, the first solo exhibition in Italy by the French artist Bertrand Loubé, inside the spaces of the Magic Bus, the gallery’s project room for experimentation and research on contemporary languages. The practice of collage runs through the history of art in the 20th century as one of its most radical gestures: to break down reality in order to reconstruct it anew. Bertrand Loubé captures this heritage and reinterprets it through personal experience, in which the cut-out is not just a technique, but a compositional principle capable of transforming paper into form, color and space.
The ten works in the show are the result of a slow process of gathering and selection. Printing papers, flocked and metallized surfaces, pages from magazines, papers recycled or crafted by hand are stored in archives over time and then cut, juxtaposed and reassembled. Every fragment conserves the memory of its origin, but in the moment when it enters the work it loses its initial function to become part of a new visual construction, governed by relationships of rhythm, balance and chromatic tension.
The abstract compositions seem to be suspended, light, but they are the result of a precise structure in which every part has its own place in relation to the others, radiating in the space.
The title The Cut-Outs inevitably calls to mind Henri Matisse, but Loubé’s research can be positioned in a broader genealogy that crosses the entire 20th century. From the papiers collés of Pablo Picasso to the constructivist experiments of Lyubov Popova and Alexander Rodchenko, from the essential chromatism of Ellsworth Kelly to the culture of the Bauhaus and De Stijl, his work enters a dialogue with a tradition that sees the surface as a space of construction rather than representation. Loubé critically reworks this legacy, intertwining it with his own experience for over ten years in the fields of graphics, fashion and design.
Far from any narrative intent, the collages of Bertrand Loubé produce an experience based on the balancing of material and color. What interests the artist is not the image in itself, but the way in which the independent elements can lead to a shared structure, transforming simple everyday materials into essential, open and dynamic compositions. The Cut-Outs is a dynamic story told through papers.

Bertrand Loubé was born in Versailles in 1972, and took a degree in 1998 at the École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques Penninghen (ESAG). From the start of his career he focused on the world of fashion and visual communication, working as an art director for international brands and agencies, including Yves Saint Laurent, Marithé + François Girbaud, Marlboro Classics and Air Paris.
In 2017 he decided to concentrate entirely on his practice as an artist. Since then he has collaborated on a stable basis with Agnès b., the French fashion designer and entrepreneur, founder of the brand of the same name and a figure of reference for her constant support for contemporary art. For her collections the artist created works from 2018 to 2022 and in 2026, interfacing this collaboration with projects in the sectors of fashion, music, wine and beverages.
In 2021-22 he worked with Boombass, of the French duo Cassius, curating the graphic design of a collectible edition and the covers of vinyl record albums.