L’autre, le même — LWS Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: July 11 → September 15, 2012

The artists express themselves through very distinct medium: Ezio D’Agostino prefers photography and Vanessa Fanuele practices drawing, sometimes installation. Their common theme is to suggest landscapes, territories; inexpressible places in fact.

The physical exploration of territories by Ezio D’Agostino reflects a search for temporality. Through a constant confrontation between presence and absence of a subject, he reveals periodicity of places and times as well as the vision and memory weaknesses.

Christian Caujolle wrote about the series Alphabet, Les Halles 1979 — 2011, which was presented within this exhibition, “that it is not about “hurried” photography, not really about contemplation, but as Ezio d’Agostino says himself, “about a photographic process which derives from my archaeology training”. This means confronting time and pacting with it. The archaeologist, such as the photographer, divides the territory so that he can better explore it. The archaeologist digs it, then, with a layered and depth approach, he reveals the layers that will provide elements of interpretation and knowledge. Through his frame (which belongs only to him and which seldom has the scientific knowledge of the archaeologist), the photographer, too, divides, slices and cuts the space we know and we experiment so that we can see it differently, with other perspectives.

This lack of spectacular reveals a cut tree trunk surrounded by dying grass which still resists while a poor plant, leaning on a green fence, tries, whereas dying, to climb out from a metallic gate. A bit further, in-depth, by the pool numbers define a podium, a winner and his runner-ups. Then, soft chalk houses on a blackboard, half erased, a child’s drawing, a small bird lost on the red back of a plastic chair, waste behind a transparent and red plastic garbage bag, chromas and signs. A calm reading of a world which is not, sharp angles, material meeting, reflection and, as always, light such as the one that makes drops of water vibrating when they get away from some humble string lights.”

Through her drawing and installations, Vanessa Fanuele presents a world full of hybrid beings, a world which can be recognized without fully revealing itself.

According to Yann Pérol, auctioneer and critic, “she plunges the viewer into a world dominated by strange hybrid beings, aquatic animals and human organs. A game of transparency enables us to see images created by Vanessa Fanuele (more and more transparent so that shapes are almost completely erased now).

Through this bestiary, Vanessa Fanuele reassesses the question of identity, as she “threatens the course of nature by suggesting teratology logic”. The various elements which make up Vanessa’s chimeras can be identified. This belongs to a long tradition as, since ancient times, the composite monster “catches the eye, brings admiration, amazement, wonderment, and concern as it is warning of Gods”, but remains an otherness symbol.