Elise Florenty & Marcel Türkowsky — Through somnambular laws — Frac île-de-france, le Plateau — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 22 → May 13, 2012

The FRAC Ile-de-France / Le Plateau is presenting Through Somnambular Laws, the first exhibition in Paris of the work of Elise Florenty and Marcel Türkowsky, which is devoted essentially to their recent output. Since they started working together, these two artists have shared the same fascination with the poetic power of language, through fables, spells and instructions. For this exhibition, they involve visitors in strolling in spaces punctuated by systems and instructions for an immersion to be lived through, like the crossing of a history governed by underground laws.

An almost schizophrenic immersion, through the encounter and exchange of different viewpoints, where otherness is experienced in a twofold assertion: the self and the other, the ego and the enemy, the quick and the dead…

Time thus seems suspended, frozen between explosion and motionlessness. Various repetitions (of language and gesture) convey thoughts prey to delirium or akin to a daze. These thoughts are haunted by legendary or ordinary figures, waiting for a movement, or an awakening. A sort of “art of resurrection”, insofar as the two artists stick closely to the precept of the German playwright Heiner Müller:

“…the dialogue with the dead must not be broken as long as they have not given back that part of the future that has been buried with them.”

Elise Florenty (born in 1978 in Pessac) and Marcel Türkowsky (born in 1978 in former East Berlin) both live and work in Berlin. Their recent shows include: “Life Ticket”, Les Eglises, Chelles art centre (2009-2010) and “Wheels of Memory”, La Synagogue art centre, Delme (2009), as well as the group exhibitions “The Eleventh Letter”, at the BKV Potsdam e.V., Germany (2010/2011), “Void of Memory”, Platform 2009, Seoul.