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20/4/2012

Davide Balula

Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris

Within the same field of research as Davide Balula’s recent paintings (River Paintings, Burnt Paintings, Artificially Aged Paintings…), the artist modifies the architecture of the gallery and installs an incubator for the creation of new paintings, a vivarium where canvases are naturally picking up pigmentation underground. The installation is composed of several tons of dirt, water, custom wood flooring, and blank canvases buried under the floor of the gallery.

At the end of the exhibition, the paintings will be unearthed via customized trap doors. They will then be stretched, framed and dispersed into the world.

A version of the exhibition as a one-night dinner will be served within the installation, consisting of cooked and raw ingredients based on edible dirt, roots and other seasonal produce. (Menu in collaboration with Agata Felluga. Natural Wine selected by Lara Brutinot and Marc Grand d’Esnon.) While Linda was devouring her daily miles in Riverside Park writing her Mémoires, Davide was planting grass and canvases under the feet of Parisians. In dialog from two different places at the same time, they exchanged words and images while walking in synch :

Linda, in your last poem, you oppose art to dirt…
Yes, let’s imagine: Pour some water, stir the mud.
Pouring water onto art? — … Stir the mud. Plant a rose. Let the earth dry. Feed the dead, feed the bee. Keep going.

Here… Look! A light-bug! — A light-bug? It seems like his light is off. And he is walking in daylight. It must be a sleepwalker. A walker too! — Did you know that light-bugs snore with the same frequency as fluorescent lights? While they are sleeping for months underground, they keep playing with a protein in their brain so they can change the color of their bottom! — By the way, time is flying and colors should change very soon.

I feel like something has been growing under my sole.

That reminds me of one of my earliest memories from when I was a little girl. We were in Miami Beach. I was desperately telling everyone how I wanted a pair of those “shoes you can see the ground under”. Of course, nobody understood what i meant… I remember clearly bending down to my cousin’s feet, and pointing at the landscape between her toes and her heels… I remember looking at those palm trees in that space under her feet… What I wanted was a pair of high heels! — Haha, an original point of view of the world already! We can stop here if you want. What about facing that ceiling?

Good idea, we could make more room if we opened some doors, here, on the ground.

And after we have a bite to eat, we could move towards that wall over there? What do you think?

After a discussion between Davide Balula and Linda Nochlin about the poem Art is not Dirt written by Linda Nochlin, 18/03/2012)

Detailed information and images available upon request
Contact Daphné
+33 (0)1 48 87 50 04
daphne@galeriefrankelbaz.com

Opening: Saturday, April 21 at 5 PM

Galerie Frank Elbaz
7 rue saint claude - Paris
Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-7pm

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