Heike Baranowsky
Dove Allouche & Evariste Richer
Marie Dainat
Mariusz Grygielewicz
James Ireland
Claire Lesteven
Pierre Malphettes
Sandra Patron
Heike Baranowsky, Dove Allouche & Evariste Richter, Marie Danat, Mariusz Grygielewicz, James Ireland, Claire Lesteven, Pierre Malphettes. The exhibition presents itself as a kind of promenade in which the invited artists return to the secular notion of landscape. Whether these landscapes are from imagination or dreams, whether they are sensual or ironic, all of them allow free rein to spectator's own imagination.
Return to the notion of landscape
Heike Baranowsky, Dove Allouche & Evariste Richter, Marie Danat, Mariusz Grygielewicz, James Ireland, Claire Lesteven, Pierre Malphettes.
Scape presents itself as a kind of promenade in which the invited artists return to the secular notion of landscape. Whether these landscapes are from imagination or dreams, whether they are sensual or ironic, all of them allow free rein to spectator‘s own imagination. By using the conventions of landscape, the works exhibited offer the possibility of an experience somewhere between reality and fiction. For all the artists, however, over and above a diversity of thought and practice (drawing, photography, video, installation) landscape remains a pretext for escaping into respective dream worlds. The stamp of the contemporary world is clearly present here. The cross-fertilization of territories and an absence of boundaries between means of artistic expression (and audiovisual technologies) offer new perceptions of landscapes from “elsewhereâ€. The artists’ intention here is of a similar order to that of the artists and scientists of the Renaissance: by resolving the problem of two dimensions through perspective, they created the illusion of a third dimension by using trompe l’oeil. It was a question of constructing a “filter†through which to perceive the world. The notion of landscape and its reality is indeed an invention. In other words, a cultural object only becomes “natural†thanks to its’ permanent artifice. The etymology of the word “perspective†comes from a transverse movement or the piercing of a passage (per-scapere).
Passing through a mirror?
Lewis Caroll is perhaps not so far away: from the hallucinatory videos of Heike Baranovsky, to the waterfalls and mirrors of James Ireland, and from the housefly trajectories of Pierre Malphettes, to the reconstitution of aurora borealis of Dove Allouche and Evariste Richer, to give just a few examples, the works presented in Scape clearly situate themselves in the ambiguity that exists between notions of “landscape and escapeâ€.
HEIKE BARANOWSKY
This young German video artist has gained some fame on the international scene since her exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery (2002), PS1 (2000) and Chisenhale (1999). She is represented by the Barbara Weiss Gallery in Berlin. Heike Baranowsky’s videos are playing with our perceptions. Through images of landscapes worked on computer she drives us in a phantasmagoric universe like that of Lewis Caroll. For Scape she will present “AUTO SCOPEâ€: a drive around Paris projected on 4 screens in slow motion. Those four screens are presenting the same traveling and each tree, building, becomes a Rorschach experience.
MARIE DAINAT
A native of Montpellier, Dainat graduated from the academy there, though now lives in Marseille. She exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art in Ceret, Galerie Athanor and Justine Lacroix in Marseille. A series of observation and imagination drawings and watercolors, constitute a collection of designs composed of plants, arabesques, and domestic objects. Most of her pieces are close to baroque decorative art. This dreamlike space is hunted with floating shadows, usual objects, hybrids of anthropomorphic and phytomorphic origin.
DOVE ALLOUCHE & EVARISTE RICHER
Dove Allouche and Evariste Richer have been working together since they met in Berlin in 1999 and until 2002. Both graduated from the Cergy Pontoise school, and have worked at Mains d’Oeuvres (Paris) since 2001, and exhibit in Corentin Hamel Gallery. The raw material of these two artists, photos, videos, manufactured artifacts, bear a meaning they object to, they try to produce a new meaning for the object.
MARIUSZ GRYGIELEWICZ
Mariusz Grygielewicz is a Polish artist. He has been living in Marseille for 10 years and has also founded RLBQ, a gallery space devoted to the promotion of contemporary art. He exhibits with CRP in Oronko (Poland) and in Sortie Numerique in Hamburg. In his work, the most useful objects become mischievous kids and lose their original function. These objects are given a new funny function and place the spectator in a sometimes uncomfortable but often amusing position. In ‘Echapée Belleâ€, some tables escape from the Art Centre, where the artist was invited; in “Paysagesâ€, school desks in tight rows make it impossible to teach and transform themselves into a colorful plain.
JAMES IRELAND
James Ireland was born in 1977 and studied at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University. He has participated in exhibitions at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art, London, Arte E Personae (Florence) and at Jerwood Gallery, London. Ireland, plays with landscape conventions, inherited from the Renaissance by building models from different useful artifacts. Through mirrors and lights, posters, Ireland works with an illusion, which plunges us in an intriguing and poetic universe.
PIERRE MALPHETTES
A graduate from the school of Fine Arts in Nantes, Pierre Malphettes, has recently exhibited his works at “La Villa Arson†(Nice), Triangle (Marseille), and Espace Paul Ricard (Paris). Movement plays a particular part in his work. Movement viewed as peregrination, as an experience of our limits and our freedom. A trip made above all by the mind. For Scape, Pierre Malphettes presents a garden, a domestic jungle with plantation of avocadoes next to the reproduction of a fly and an ant in neon light.
CLAIRE LESTEVEN
Claire Lesteven studied at the School of Fine Art in Nantes. She is represented in Bruxelles at the Galerie des Filles du Calvaire, and participated in FIAC (Paris) in 2002. She has also exhibited at Shug Harbour in New York. Claire transforms circular boxes into camera obscura with several openings. The final photography is the result of the images produced by these openings.
Organized by Triangle France (Marseille, France) and Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius, Lithuania)
Curator: Sandra Patron, triangle (Marseille, France)
Opening: January 28, Friday, 6pm
CAC, Vokieciu 2, LT- 01130 Vilnius, Lithuania