MATERIAE
Union between the elements
Opening reception: Thursday 23 January, 2020, from 6 to 9pm
Exhibition: January 23 – April 4, 2020
Pauline Bazignan – Anne Féat Gaiss – Cornelia Konrads – Giulia Manset – Janaina Mello Landini – Irina Rasquinet
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MATERIAE
Union between the elements
Exhibition: January 23 – April 4, 2020
Opening reception: Thursday 23 January, 2020, from 6 to 9pm
“And first the fourfold root of all things hear! White gleaming Zeus,
life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis whose tears bedew mortality”
Empedocles, 5th century BC
Materiae is a tribute to our earth in all its beauty and fragility. All that it consists of and what it so generously offers up to us. The fruits provided that we transform and that change from inconspicuous basics to exposed and sublimated. Sometimes shaped by artists, keen to explore its nature, in an unconscious connection in order to illustrate it with additional sensitivity.
It is a reflection of a burgeoning world as far back as could possibly be imagined, up until the moment in the making. The past intertwines with the future; time no longer exists. Working the matter gives shape to symbols.
Fire, water, air and earth transform thanks to the imagination of the artists. The elements seem to whisper their innermost secrets through the works, to engage and appeal while calling to mind through their finesse and preciousness the fragility of any condition. Create to question, so as not to forget our origins, from the chaotic bowels of the universe to the unlikely existence of man, awareness in everything and for everything?
Here the artists repeat and echo through these almost animist creations of the interconnection among everything. Everything transforms, everything evolves, everything perishes, everything can be reborn but everything is linked and connected.
By creating her precious, half-insect, half-character miniature spiders, Cornelia Konrads makes reference to the link with the spiritual and the divine. The need for man to be protected by creating mythical creatures, fashioned from found objects, echoing the beginnings of humanity. Magic, the soul of the work, contact between materiae prima and the invisible.
Contemplating the invisible, conquering the elements, mastering nature and protecting oneself against the unknown…
These is all illustrated by Irina Rasquinet’s branches, torn from trees during a storm and enhanced with crystals. Timeless, now defying the heavens and the winds, seemingly resurrected forever.
Timelessness interpreted by Anne Féat Gaiss like a primordial surge of light, reflects a distant chaos structured at the origin of the world.
Pauline Bazignan’s china clay cocoons, delicately enhanced with colour, take on the appearance of aspiring shoots, flowers on the verge of blooming, an image of which appears evanescent like a memory on the canvas. A memory that reminds us of our short- lived condition. What trace do we want to leave?
Maybe that of a tree growing, gracefully blooming between heaven and earth as implied in Jainaina Mello Landini’s work. An immaculate and precious tree, in harmony and symbiosis with its environment. At a time when forests are weeping, this precious and pristine work reminds us, through each of its finely worked offshoots, what a finely balanced miracle life is. Like an unlikely breath in the vast universe that enables our earth to survive in a hostile galaxy. This breath that is made tangible by the virtuosity of the incisions in Giulia Manset’s delicate art of paper. Regular and precise, a perfect balance that reflects the marvellous precision in every aspect of the nature surrounding us.
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