Collective exhibitions can be at times too vast and confusing to really allow visitors to appreciate each and every artist involved. But this will not be the case with "Avec Motifs Apparents" at Le Centrequatre, Paris.
This collective event will indeed focus only on six artists - Prune Nourry, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Jérémy Gobé, Xavier Juillot, Alice Mulliez and Kader Attia - who will be creating and recreating monumental work in situ between March and August 2014.
The installations will look at different topics and themes, from architecture to design, passing through sugar levels in food and the consequences a male dominated society is having on women.
Prune Nourry, a multidisciplinary French artist who has been focusing on anthropology and bioethics in her works, will display sculptural pieces the audience can interact with.
One of her most recent and interesting projects is entitled "Terracotta Daughters" and consists in an army of 116 life-size figures of girls. Inspired by the Terracotta Warriors, the Chinese artefacts dating back to 210 B.C. discovered in 1974 by farmers digging a well, the pieces recreate the style of the warriors and were made with the same technique.
The "Terracotta Daughters" were modelled by Nourry on 8 Chinese orphan girls for a project analysing the preference parents give to having a son in Asia. There is actually a social twist to this project: Prune met the girls who inspired the artworks through the non-profit organization The Children of Madaifu and decided through it to support the education of the 8 girls for a minimum of 3 years thanks to the sale of 8 original sculptures.
Born in Nkongsamba, Cameroon, but based in Belgium, Pascale Marthine Tayou moves instead from everyday objects and experiences in his works. He mixes cultures, recycled objects and materials, images and human experiences to recreate new spaces and monumental installations that are difficult to categorise and pigeon-hole. In his practice art is something that can't be separated from life, but it's a medium that can help people grasp the beauty and ugliness of the world we live in.
Jérémy Gobé also moves from recovered objects and recreates through them a range of works including textile sculptures. Gobé ennobles his materials, sculpting out of them marine landscapes, forms of life or abstract shapes.
At times the materials he pleats, folds, assembles and sculpts form dense landscapes spilling over tables and chairs like waves, ending up looking like animals or like dismembered parts of a human body.
Thorough her gourmet and food installations, Alice Mulliez creates innovative textures employing icing and crystal sugar to reference wider themes, tackling issues such as traditions, heritage, gastronomic culture, and aesthetic forms, designing architectural ceiling decorations moulded in sugar.
Xavier Juillot is known for his experiments with plastics: a while back he wrapped a 19th century building (and the surrounding trees...) in Ludwigshafen in 13,000 square feet of silver polyamide using vacuum-shrinking technology that integrated air channels into the fabric.
Focusing on disciplines such as geography, politics, history and gender, artist and researcher Kader Attia uses mediums like installations, photography, video, sculpture and drawing. So far for his artworks he has employed rather unusual materials including couscous and aluminium foil, though his best known work remains "Flying Rats", an installation of life-size, birdseed sculptures of children being devoured by a flock of pigeons.
"Avec Motifs Apparents" is designed to attract the attention of the visitors through the themes, materials and colours of the installations, charming them and sparking dialogue between the emotionally charged works on display and the reality of the themes dealt with.
"Avec Motifs Apparents" (Prune Nourry - 22nd March - 1st June 2014; Pascale Marthine Tayou, Jérémy Gobé, Xavier Juillot - 22nd March - 10th August 2014; Alice Mulliez and Kader Attia - 24th June - 10th August 2014) is at Le Centrequatre, 5 rue Curial 75019, Paris.
Image credits for this post
1. Pascale Marthine Tayou, Empty Gift, 2013
© Christian Hinz
Courtesy Galleria Continua (San Gimignano/Beijing/Les Moulins)
2. Jérémy Gobé, Chair, 2009 © Jérémy Gobé
3. Prune Nourry, Terracotta Daughters, Magda Danysz Gallery, Shanghai, September 14th-October 26th, 2013
© Prune Nourry
Courtesy Madga Danysz Gallery
4. Prune Nourry and the craftsman team from the Li Yuan Terracotta Factory for Terracotta Daughters, Xi'an, China, 2013
© Zachary Bako
Courtesy Madga Danysz Gallery
5. Pascale Marthine Tayou, Favelas, 2012
© Pascale Marthine Tayou
Courtesy Galleria Continua (San Gimignano/Beijing/Les Moulins)
6. - 7. Jérémy Gobé, Résident, 2012 © Jérémy Gobé
8. Alice Mulliez, Vestiges © Alice Mulliez
9. Xavier Juillot, Ludwigshafen, 2006
© Arnaud Le Grain
10. Jérémy Gobé, Chair, 2009 © Jérémy Gobé
11. Pascale Marthine Tayou, Empty Gift, 2013
© Markus Tretter
Courtesy Galleria Continua (San Gimignano/Beijing/Les Moulins)
12. Prune Nourry, Terracotta Daughter #3, 2013, terracotta, 150cm
© Zachary Bako
Courtesy Madga Danysz Gallery
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