A survey around the materials and their qualities of fluidity and malleability. Six artists present works that have in common a formal approach dealing with the immaterial and transcendent dimension of the creative process.
Davide Bertocchi, France Fiction, Francesco Gennari, G. Küng, Kilian Rüthemann, Sean Townley
Substance is a survey around the materials and their qualities of fluidity and malleability. The six invited artists present
works that have in common a formal approach dealing with the immaterial and transcendent dimension of the creative
process, without however omitting the formalizing properties from the used materials for the creation of their works.
Davide Bertocchi's Collider is an installation composed by two sculptures, two spheres containing slime.
Manufactured as a toy for kids, this non-toxic viscous substance would - according to the artist – capture the subatomic
particles in the air. Placed under each sphere, the original vinyl records of Imagination's Just an illusion and Erasure's
It doesn't have to be tend to enhance the collide between physical truth and the imaginary, between space and mind.
For FRANCE FICTION the formalization of any piece arises from the encounter among all the aspirations
by all the five collective's constituents. This new installation as presented shows the result from an invented game whose
logical basis is the capacity to characterize the inner qualities of the objects and the possibilities the players can have
at their disposal so to relate them together.
G. Küng shows a work titled Lake Diligence where a slow action is taking place. With a plastic sheet folded to
hold inky water, evaporation will trace the duration of the exhibition, and the resulting "drawing" will have predictably
unpredictable results.
Interested in exploring the potentialities of the materials and their capacity to react depending on the
situations, the work of Kilian Rüthemann is inflected in glass slabs hung onto the wall thanks to black acrylic glue. In
order to convey the presence of the artistic process in his works, the artist contaminates the space so as to highlight the
sculptural and pictorial attributes of the objects and of the selected materials.
Sean Townley presents a sculpture of an articulated cat's paw. The cast urethane material substitutes the
traditional marble or granite for a liquid plastic and alludes to a motif of funerary sculpture which has transformed
over time.
In the photograph entitled Autoritratto come notte (Self-Portrait as night) Francesco Gennari depicts himself
as a night sky, wearing a loden, a beloved item the artist has been using in former works. The presented metonym is the
one between his own body covered with textiles and the artwork's nocturnal shades: in that way the artist's body
becomes the balancing point of the photograph and the axis around which the night sky is revolving.
Image: Davide Bertocchi, Collider I, 2013. Glass sphere, slime, tripod, original Imagination's "Just an illusion" vinyl record, MDF plinth Cm. 140 x 30 x 30. Unique
Galerie Antoine Levi
44 rue Ramponeau F-75020 Paris
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