Cabinet Da-End 08 — Da-End Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 10 → May 5, 2018

Cabinet Da-End 08 — Galerie Da-End Huitième volet d’un cycle d’expositions en hommage aux cabinets de curiosités, Cabinet Da-End 08 nous entraîne sur les traces d’un ... 2 - Bien Critique

The Galerie Da-End pursues its cycle of exhibitions dedicated to cabinets of curiosities and invites thirty French or international artists to unveil their works in a scenography reminiscent of the original « rooms of wonders » on the occasion of this 8th edition.

Célia Nkala, Vase vertébral, 2012 Biscuit de Faïence, Porcelaine émaillée, Os Sphénoïde animal — 16 × 30 cm Courtesy de l’artiste et la Galerie Da-End

Through a rigorous selection of artworks with various mediums — drawing, painting, sculpture, video or photography, the exhibition opens up to new visual horizons by exploring this year the theme of Primitivism. Since the 15th century, with the constitution of the first cabinets of curiosities in Europe, masks, totems, statuettes from Africa, Asia or America have been collected and exhibited as many exotic objects translating the beauty and diversity of our world.

Marco Fantini, The bound setter, 2018 Technique mixte sur bois — 60 × 80 cm Courtesy de l’artiste et la Galerie Da-End

This encounter with the strange and the foreign much later lead a few pioneer minds to question the status of artworks, radically disrupting shapes and aesthetics. A major influence for most of last century’s avant-garde movements, Primitivism encourages European artists to break the conventions built by their culture and a long art history tradition.

“I was always looking at the fetishes. […] They all served the same purpose. They were weapons. To help people stop obeying to the spirits, to become independent. Tools. If we give a shape to the spirits, we become independent. The spirits, the unconscious, emotion, it’s all the same. I understood why I was a painter.”

Picasso, letter to André Malraux.

Drawing inspiration from the expressive simplicity of extra-occidental creations, the artists from then on searched for alternative means of representation, in which the fidelity to the subject is no longer primordial. In the same way, on the occasion of this new Cabinet Da-End, the dialogue between the old and the contemporary will not only be made by placing heterogeneous works from varied sources and periods side by side ; but above all within the recent artworks themselves that try to explore the idea of a return to the roots.

Orié Inoué, Jeune fille à quinze ans, 2012 Partition, graines, fil de coton — 32 × 25 cm Courtesy de l’artiste et la Galerie Da-End

Raw use of natural materials, conception of symbolic objects filled with a spiritual, philosophic or magic message, perpetuation of archaic gestures, ritual dimension of the act of creation, the relation that artists maintain today with tribal art are still fine, though they can be subtle.