Reversolidus — Charlotte Charbonnel — Backslash Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 17 → April 28, 2012

The Backslash gallery announce reverSolidus, a personal exhibition by French artist Charlotte Charbonnel. Her work centres on scientific research, mainly in the areas of acoustics, seismology and magnetism. Her pieces make use of different modes of expression, including drawings and installations. They draw on a diversity of sensorial experiences to send viewers on a complex journey in a universe governed by the poetic dimension of art.

The exhibition’s title, reverSolidus, questions the notion of matter in the broadest sense of the term, encompassing both acoustic and physical matter. The solidus refers to the precise moment of crystallisation, when matter becomes solid, for example, when molten glass solidifies at a given temperature. Charlotte Charbonnel’s works are often linked to experimental concerns. The artist gathers together a huge variety of scientific research and studies it so she can extract the theory and practice needed to give form to the challenges she sets herself.

“I’m interested in the things you can’t control, in that alliance of beauty and danger perceptible during natural phenomena,”

Charlotte Charbonnel

Charlotte Charbonnel is taking over the Backslash space to offer visitors an unsettling experience that constantly shakes up their senses. The sense of disorientation is given concrete form with installations that the artist arranges according to modes of expression closely tied into a form of lyricism. The artist subjects material, iron filings in particular, to multiple variations. She is thus attempting some form of sanctification of matter. Here we have magnetic attractions on sheets of paper, steel monsters that merge together and push each other away. Charlotte Charbonnel’s images, matter and sounds, her art, all mark out a plasticity that lies on the borderline between science and sorcery.

Charlotte Charbonnel is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Her work has featured in a variety of institutions, including the Versailles Maréchalerie in 2009, La Verrière Hermès in Brussels and Musée Réattu in Arles in 2011.