While Mambo is widely recognized for his figurative and expressive style, it is under his first name, Flavien, that the artist signs his abstract work—clearly distinguishing two complementary creative paths. Since 2015, this abstract practice has become a space of visual research, deeply informed by influences ranging from American Minimalism to Aboriginal and Folk Art, with clear echoes of Sol LeWitt, Ellsworth Kelly, Yayoi Kusama, Piet Mondrian, and others.
The paintings in Happy Painters Club are composed of layers of simple, repeated vertical brushstrokes, applied with meditative precision. Each stroke is an autonomous element, yet it is their interplay—their collective rhythm across the canvas—that forms the complete composition. Through this repetitive gesture, Flavien reflects on the relationship between the individual and the group, between personal ingenuity and collective absurdity.
„ I like the paradox of having a very mechanical way of painting, that finds its beauty in the mistakes and accidents happening along the way.“
Flavien ‘Mambo’ Demarigny, 2018.
The canvases become microcosms of coexistence, where each mark, each shift in color or texture, represents a voice within a larger whole. This method, at once conceptual and instinctive, reveals a deeply humanist vision of the world—where beauty emerges from the fragile balance between chaos and order.
The title of the exhibition playfully suggests a community of artists—”happy painters”—freely expressing themselves through a universal language, liberated from narrative and figuration. A club open to all who see in the act of painting not just expression, but a way of thinking, of feeling, of being.
Happy Painters Club invites us to slow down, to observe, to feel what each brushstroke has to say—on its own and among the others.
Artworks
Setup
Av. de Beauregard 1
1700 Fribourg
Switzerland
Only on appointment
T +41 79 301 11 37