Désirs Archaïques — Exposition collective — Olivier Robert Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 27 → December 31, 2010

Galerie Olivier Robert is pleased to announce Désirs Archaiques a group show of young artists based in the USA who come from the New York art scene.

New York City is a laboratory tuned to the future: from its telluric ground emanate vibes of consciousness that infuse its artistic creation. Like a chameleon moved by desires and challenges, this surprising and vivifying city under goes continual metamorphoses to maintain access between two worlds: at sunset lays the Old World and its mysteries, meanwhile the American Dream wakes up at sunrise. To think of New York as a jungle of crazy ambitions and sophisticated desires is not enough. Different cultures and worlds meet in this city, in harmonious or cacophonous manners that only contemporary artists can perceive visually by giving it shape.

In order to grab this energy, we have chosen nine artists who do not necessarily live in New York but who are associated with the artistic movement that belongs to the megalopolis. If today that city dreams too much of itself, gets trapped in its mineral world, these artists try to escape: they search nature and themselves for a fertile imaginary Eden, either fantasized or haunted, fleeing the city that tries to absorb them. Then, what do we discover? Light is dazzling us, colors and matter are back to when they were dissociated (David Benjamin Sherry, Jack Greer), to finally fusion (Evan Robarts). Forms of life crystallize (Erika Cerruzi) or pullulate (Leif Ritchey) in a bigger, colorful dream. Now Humans wake up, disabled or amazed (Maggie Lee), or dream awakens (Grear Patterson). Are we in Heaven or Hell? Even if maturity and its fatal questions come too quickly, we can still escape (Edouard Nardon).

Thus we have the feeling to travel through different states of consciousness, linked together by a common motivation driven by archaic desires: on one hand exuberance and celebration and on the other hand, fragility and doubt. Minerals, lava, saps and visions get together and recognize themselves. Is wild, sometimes strange, vitality an essential component of dreams? It is for sure a constitutive of the American imaginary (Alex Da Corte), and of the youth from New York.