Les Limbes — par Caterina Riva, curatrice en résidence — La Galerie, centre d’art contemporain — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 21 → July 16, 2016

When I returned to Italy after living and working in New Zealand for three years, I stumbled on a book by French sociologist Michel Tournier, first published in 1967 as Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique. The author imagines Robinson Crusoe’s tale turned on its head, experienced through the filter of the island of Speranza and embodied in the character of Friday. This was the departure point for an exhibition proposal to La Galerie, after my return to Europe; two years have now gone by, and Michel Tournier died at the beginning of this year. All this time, I tried not to lose the way of seeing I had acquired during my antipodean experience and to apply it to my life back in the continent. I would like to hold on to my upside-down perspective by challenging it through other people’s positions and viewpoints, and use it to analyse what happens in the world.

“Limbes" in French suggest borders, fringes, both in a geographical and psychological sense; an in-between state, perhaps a realm — both real and imaginary — where reflection is possible and difference treasured. Through the lens of the varying narratives of the five invited artists , Les Limbes articulates the manifold journeys in space, time and the artistic medium towards creating singular and plural spaces of freedom.

Renato Leotta has been looking for different rhythms and rituals for his new body of work; for this he chose an island off the west coast of Sicily and then Lisbon as temporary addresses. The sea, the beach, the tides and the wind have become his studio and played a major part in finding viable ways of using natural elements in the making of art.

Alicia Frankovich has been testing the potential of bodies in space and engaging with gestures, behaviours, responses and their social and political consequences. Her sculptures, drawings and choreographies all conceal hints of her past as an athlete, her life between Europe and the Southern hemisphere, and her search for a post-human condition in which joy and diversity will thrive.

From her studio in Vienna, Flora Hauser has been working on new drawings and paintings in which she reverses their habitual scale and order of importance. The minute lines and grids making up the syntax of her aesthetic language can be discovered only on close inspection, and are the result of an analytical, rather than instinctual approach to the support and its contents.

In his new film Shoulder Blades, Felix Melia juxtaposes the flesh of language, both improvised and spoken from his own tight script, with visuals of the gentle exchange of poses and movements between a man and a woman confined in an interior space. How can we find spaces of freedom in cities, of intimacy in relationships? How can we be ourselves rather than play the parts forced upon us by social, commercial and communication frames of reference?

Tahi Moore’s videos and subtitles confront viewers with elusive philosophical questions. A mix of misconstrued instructions and a striving for a better life, Moore’s texts in English and French heighten the ambiguity of the notion of islands of being derived by the artist from literature, sociology and the Internet.

Caterina Riva