Mike MacKeldey & Carolein Smit — Paizô — Da-End Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 18, 2017 → January 6, 2018

This winter, the Galerie Da-End invites the Dutch sculptress Carolein Smit to show her work for the first time alongside that of German painter Mike MacKeldey, on the occasion of a duo-exhibition titled ‘Paizô’.

———

From the Greek παίζω (paidós « child »), the term Paizô refers to the idea of playing, teasing and entertainment. There is something of that kind in the explosive encounter of these two artists who, each in their own way, participate in one same movement of subversion of tradition. Their dialogue aims to arouse questioning and surprise, a salutary slap in such times of conformism.

Smit’s baroque and puckish sculptures revisit with inventiveness certain codified themes from mythology or religious iconography. From Medusa to the Mystic Lamb, the artist plays with norms and defuses the sense of tragic linked to this startling imagery. Her fascination with contrasts — between ugliness and grace, fragility and concern, illustrates the impermanence of terrestrial goods before the inevitability of death.

———
Carolein Smit was born in 1960 in Amersfoort. In 1979, she entered for five years at the Fine Arts Academy of St-Joost in Breda where she studied graphic design and lithography. Followed on thirteen years of illustration work for various magazines and journals until a three months residency in 1995 at the European Ceramic Work Center (ECWC) in Den Bosch during which she fell in love with clay. Choosing from then ceramics as her privileged means of expression, she probes transgressive beauties and refutes the classical standards of what is commonly considered appealing.

For his part, German artist Mike MacKeldey presents a body of work that announces a new era : the period of sarcastic portraits inspired by History make way for that of a wilder punk expressionism, freed of any constraints of realism. The space dedicated to painting itself diminishes within assemblages in which found objects and framing hold a more important place. Born in 1973 in Frankfurt-am-Main, Mike MacKeldey has developed his artistic practice outside of the academic system. More and more experimental, his work somehow leaves the canvas to broaden to the fields of installation and sculpture. In his more recent works made for the exhibition, the human face tends to disappear in favor of researches heading towards abstraction and disfiguration.