Summer thinking — exposition collective — Maria Lund Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: July 3 → September 5, 2020

(Summer closure : 2-24.08.2020)
A small drawing by Shoi titled Spring 2020 served as a catalyst for this exhibition. It shows a building in front of a sunset. Out of the windows, human silhouettes can be seen, whereas in the street, void from any human presence, an elephant and two cats are strolling and being carefully observed by a bat hanging from a tree… Naive, rich, amusing, spontaneous and precise; this was confinement. Adding to the tragedy of Coronavirus, which plunged the entire humanity into profound questioning, the heightened visibility of the increasing material distress, systemic racism and the suppression of human rights such as freedom of speech appeared. As if a giant looking glass was being hung above our old planet to show us the pain, questioning and difficulties we each have to face.
In this context, artists are both participants and observers who absorb, filter and transform life experience and the state of things. Some express it through their work; others keep it at a distance, by offering an elsewhere, an escape.

Marlon Wobst (born in 1980 in Germany) created Me, a felted wool self-portrait, in which the eyes stand out from a featureless face. His tapestries Brown and Blonde each show two halves of a masculine body with brown hair and pubic hair and two halves of a feminine body with blond hair and pubic hair. An alternative way to address the question of colour, which sadly seems more relevant than ever…

The newest creations of Didier Boussarie (born in 1958 in France) embody a significant shift in his work. After having focused for a long time on nature, fauna and related matters (Nightweavers, 2015 — creations with spider webs), and rarely alluding to the human figure, the artist has started a series of frontal feminine portraits, mainly monochrome, where sensuality, anxiety and humor closely cohabit. The biscuit majestically revisits and distorts Magnum ice creams ads, where an attractive woman takes a very suggestive bite out of an ice cream. In Didier Boussarie’s Prussian blue artwork, a neatly combed woman brushes a biscuit with the tip of her lips. By looking closely at the work’s background, one discovers the contours of naked men with erections. The motif draws inspiration from an old Jouy textile print, the Galantes collection.
Two other portraits — one coral-coloured and the other one raspberry-coloured, show a blond woman with an anxious yet penetrating gaze. Her lips are both demonstrative and evanescent, two strokes of carmine red, as an artifice imposed on a figure oscillating between appearance and disappearance on a luminous and light subtle backdrop. Both portraits look at us: a void, an anxiety, a calling or simply a gaze?

Farida Le Suavé (born in 1969 in France) developed, between 2007 and 2018, the series of Heads (Têtes) drawings that resemble a premonition. Very graphic faceless heads or more precisely featureless faces: one masked, another supported by a life belt, yet one isolated from the world wearing headphones and others wrapped in a floral motif like a scarf. Only a hippopotamus head with its mouth wide-open and big teeth translates a form of vivacity. The sculpture Small monticules, a two-part fair-skin coloured organic topography is delicately resting on a round-stripped mattress… Landscape, human bodies or both at the same time… The two halves seem to have been shaped from each other while remaining at a distance… Is it an image of living together? Nature is also present in Farida Le Suavé’s ceramic sherds; fragments of her work as a sculptor on which textile and wallpaper ornaments are transcribed in coloured pencil (flowers, foliage, birds, branches as well as traditional Kabylian symbols and geometric patterns). The transcription of motifs that the artist continued during confinement is a form of meditation because of the concentration and slowness it requires. As a caress, the details come to life and undulate on the bodies of the ceramics.

Peter Neuchs (born in 1958 in Denmark) offers us La Huella, an enigmatic image: night scene or “Day for night”, representing a house next to a river circled by pine trees enlarged by a low-angle shot… What is going on? Is it inhabited or abandoned? The title, in Spanish, means “the print”… A human print, print of a strong vision, of a memory? The artwork is striking, captivating because of its luminosity, powerful and surreal colours but also because of the story that is not being disclosed. Peter Neuchs continues to carry this fascinating secret with him, which is characteristic of his universe.

How fragile we are is the title given by Lyndi Sales (born in 1973 in South Africa) to a small frail artwork, the anatomical cartography of a lung cut up in a thin lottery ticket paper. A poetic reminder of what we are — simple fabric, whose resistance hangs by a thread — the numerous Coronavirus victims and George Floyd in memoriam. By using a lottery ticket, Lyndi Sales also refers to the English expression “when your number is up”.
Another cartography — dreams, illusions, emotions — appears as a splendid embroidered tapestry: A place where I found moments of confusion: Catacomb dream map. The artwork falls in with a first ensemble of embroideries presented at the gallery during the exhibition I found a rainbow butterfly once (2019).

Coronavirus caused a new source of anxiety for Shoi (born in 1983 in South Korea), a Korean artist living in France, when she found out that an Asian woman had been kicked out of a metro train because of her appearance and the Asian origin of the virus. From that point on, being of Asian descent in France ceased to be innocuous. To fight her new fear, the artist created a ceramic jar that became her diary. During confinement, she inscribed a drawing per day. Rolling, rolling is its title; it alludes to a never-ending movement while referring to the fact that one has to turn around the jar to read the images.
We find once more the armless and legless woman — an iconographic figure of Shoi’s work for the past five years — as a “yellow” beauty, a swimmer-jellyfish, but we also discover watchful eyes, a woman with very long black hair in front of a mirror, a stabbing spilling yellow blood and a beautiful tiger mask… All these potential stories continue on paper as twelve little watercolours. The artists revisits higgledy-piggledy with her characteristic mix of humor, poetry and relevance — the myth of The Fall, the idyllic images of holiday ads, a nocturnal dream, childhood, ecology, and current events, where good laughs go hand in hand with sadness, solitude and dreams of freedom.

Thanks to the propositions of six artists, SUMMER THINKING embraces a large scope. It is an invitation to reflect on our human condition and life on our planet.