I’m in Love with the New World — Art : Concept Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 12 → February 16, 2013

The End of the World, the Apocalypse, and a subsequent renewal and renaissance through non-duality are a few insights proposed by Vidya Gastaldon. On occasion of her third solo exhibition at Art: Concept. Inspired and amused by ideas of planetary annihilation that often border on intellectual catastrophe and collective panic, she has projected her imagination on what the new world could really look like and translated her ideas into a new series of paintings and installations.

These strange and unpredictable paintings blend ideas of necessary destruction with ideas of creation and advent of a new world, interrogating on the form that this world would take: new Eden or new Hell? Three installations complete this luminous yet disquieting ensemble of paintings. One of them, a homage to Meret Oppenheim, presents a series of chubby and soft slippers, died and embroidered with crossing red veined patterns. At once linked to the earth element and to blood circulation symbolizing life, their feathery materiality also connects them to the realm of dreams and to the air element. 13 pairs of slippers aligned along the wall, awaiting 13 guests.

A more Lewis Carollish installation, reminds us of the Mad Hatter’s cluttered table: Here Vidya disseminates painted teapots and objects, she arranges them to create a hilarious and foamy apparition. These humanized objects, permeated with a certain cartoonish surrealism, remind us of Disney’s animated objects. They abound, parade and constitute a universe on the edge of reality; riveted to an existing yet weird temporality.

Questions on overflowing, unrest and circulation from one world to another are bound to bring about questions on the Apocalypse, “Après moi le déluge” one could say… This notion has existed for centuries but it has changed radically during World War II. The image of the atomic mushroom has been enough to make humanity realize that by accessing technological mastery, for the first time, mankind could consider taking control of its own extinction; leaving the esoteric side of the event aside: The Last Judgement thus becoming completely superfluous. Since then, there has been an abundance of Apocalyptic theories, even though the origin of the greek word “Apokálypsis” would rather suggest a revelation leading to a new meaning of reality than the mere end of the world. The shift in meaning between revelation and annihilation is to be found in the duality of certain pieces by Vidya Gastaldon. Within the explosion of colors and details, a few aerodynamic, ethereal and transparent entities struggle against the multiple-faced monsters that hide in the folds. Vidya’s pieces interact with each other. Less idyllic than her previous works, but without becoming negative, her recent works define a visual universe by means of staging and storytelling.

With her mystical, fantastical and very vivid approach of art, Vidya Gastaldon develops a sort of harmonization of qualities both spiritual and physical. Allergic to any attempt to control and restrain her universe, she delivers a cosmic overview combining Hindi divinities, Muppet-Show characters and Christian references. Her work, reminiscent of artists such as Turner, Burchfield, Blake or Bunuel, is extremely multi faced and deals with the divine, the hallucinatory but also with everyday life. In a mixture of sacred, sensual, humour and sometimes provocative creations, she manages to establish a connection between “being” and “meant to be”. She engenders new beliefs, and by means of negative and positive impulses she pushes social unconsciousness out of the way, liberating our collective thought of the predefined egregores that oblige us to keep reproducing spiritual and social patterns.

The end of the World hasn’t happened, we can breathe and start focusing on the next apocalyptic conspiracy; in the meantime Vidya Gastaldon is in love with this new world.