Group Show — Archipel — Archipelago — Maria Lund Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: July 6 → September 1, 2012

Archipelago is a journey through the arid lands of Lyndi Sales and Maria Loizidou’s imaginary landscapes. It is a stopover into the contemplative fields of Lee Jin-Woo and a wandering through Yoon Ji-Eun’s daily living microcosms. Followed by an encounter with Didier Boussarie’s botanic observations of domestic cacti and Helen Schmitz flowers’ with strong identities, the trip concludes with a dive into Catherine Maria Chapel’s dreamlike universe…

Didier BOUSSARIE (born in France in 1958) drawing

A discreet, pertinent and tender gaze crosses Didier Boussarie’s work. He’s a fine observer of all that breathes, palpitates and can be transformed. Through a large variety of matters and supports (painting, photo, wood, glass and collage) the artist delivers an account of life, a most refined lesson in perceptivity. The motifs can vary — landscapes, bodies, insects — but the real subject is a desire to see, to understand, to feel, to caress with the gaze in order to retain the elusive, if only for a moment.

Catherine Maria CHAPEL (born in France in 1968) installation, drawing

Catherine Maria Chapel’s work evokes a journey into the unconscious, an awakened dream. Her drawings and cut-outs are like poetic reminiscences where fragments of beauty have been juxtaposed. A young woman’s blue face upon which a butterfly has landed; the silhouette of a young man stretching-out on an intensely luminous background… The artist also transposes her sensorial explorations into 3D: in a suspended fabric cradle the secrets of a man’s heart are floated. Apparitions and suggestions, diverse registers are merged — A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not a far call off.

LEE Jin Woo (born in South Korea in 1959) works on paper

Painting, relief or rather relief-painting, Lee Jin-Woo’s three dimensional pictures invite contemplation. They are born from an invisible and massive labour. Numerous layers of traditional Korean Hanji paper have been superimposed to form strata on which Lee paints, buries substances (charcoal, earth, pigments) and brushes. A bark-like substance with a more or less pronounced relief is formed allowing the artist to work on its surface or to explore and unveil elements buried into the mass of translucent sheets. The works contain real depth and transparency, whilst being particularly sensitive to light variations. They continuously defy perception.

Maria LOIZIDOU (born in Cyprus in 1958) drawing

The series of drawings Memoscapes by Maria Loizidou is inspired by the imaginary landscapes in the background of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings. They seek out the tracks or imprints of real-life on our memory. Pastel backgrounds are covered with a geometric motif suggesting infinity whereas fine pencil strokes create powerful volumes. Dynamic figures seem carried into movement and action by gravity or some other deciding force: objects and shapes, fragments of towns or landscapes are confronted or fuse with bodies. An impression of great concentration emerges — the characters evolve in their own world, in a reality made-up of each person’s issues. An existential choreography emerges where the actors only partially determine their movements. The artist visits unknown landscape contained within the memory of each being.

Until September 29th 2012, an installation of drawings and video by Maria Loizidou is presented in the group show Mapping Cyprus: Contemporary Views, at the Bozart Museum in Brussels, Belgium.

Lyndi SALES (born in South Africa in 1973) drawing and cut-out

The artist uses models and structures taken from nature — inspiration is: the infinitely small as well as the immensity of space. Her diptych work presented in Archipelago is based on a contemporary aerial view and old maps from a deserted region of The Emirates. Lyndi Sales laser cuts an undulating motif where the edges have been burnt thus evoking sand dunes and the exceptional heat in that the area. The complex puzzle of moving sand structures is superimposed with the fragile drawing of a map. Indirectly she refers to the power struggle which exists between man and nature.

Helene SCHMITZ (born in 1960 in Sweden) photography

In her series Blow up, Helene Schmitz has portrayed plants in different stages of evolution. Buds, flowers and withered leaves are isolated, set-up under studio lighting and photographed on coloured backgrounds. Taken out of their contexts the plants become striking as well as surreal, almost artificial. The photographs are like family portraits where each family member has his own assertive character. Schmitz reveals here another aspect of nature which is far from the fragile bucolic image which is often conveyed. Voluptuous, viscid, velvety, curled-up or striking and palpitating, the series Blow up delivers an almost human vision of plants that we thought we knew.

YOON Ji-Eun (born in South Korea in 1982) drawing, relief

Yoon Ji-Eun draws on stratified wood. She also grooves, carves and assembles wooden volumes in order to create landscapes that have multiple perspectives. The topography developed in this way reveals the majestic contours of mountains, the rivers and lakes drawn in the wood veins and stains. These dream-like microcosms are peopled with small solitary beings, sometimes with no faces, that seem lost to themselves, absorbed in their daily tasks, asleep or meditative. Whilst the wood strata suggests time passing, the characters appear timeless. We are reminded of the daily-life scenes painted by Bruegel The Elder with their gentle poetry and contemplative representation of trivial actions. The figures are placed in a circle, or follow the rings in the wood thus emphasizing the notion of the cycle eternally starting over. The cycle of a day, of life, of history…