Valérie Dantas Mota, Christof Zwiener — Tightrope, de la création d’un équilibre — Galerie Laurent Mueller — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 9 → March 30, 2013

The tightrope is equilibrium and balance but also the tension of a straight line and the possibility of a constant disequilibrium. The walk over the void is as much a very personal act as it is a performance which symbolises our world in constant change.

This equilibrium is essentially defined by the possibility of a fall, by the crumbling of the system. A system is always in balance, on the one hand there is structure and on the other its individual elements, reassembled in chaos. The paradox of an equilibrium between order and disorder.

Valérie Dantas Mota has worked on the equilibrium between materials. By constructing open systems in wax, in lead, in wood and in leather, which are prone to fail. Each material is in a different state, wax and lead have gone through physical transformations and could return to their initial state. Wood and leather have been definitely altered, they have been cut and now remind us of their initial form which used to bear life.

Christof Zwiener has been researching the system behind the system, a type of self- reference to installation art. With his arrangement of white plinths of different sizes but all linked through the invisible thread that is their identical volume, he is looking to confront the fix points which define the tightrope with the universe of possibilities which inhabits the space in-between.

Equilibrium is treated as a physical domain, the interdependence between the parties gives stability and structures the whole, there exists a charge of energy which links all the shown elements and which contributes to the result. The question of equilibrium is as much physical as it is philosophical, the shown pieces ask the question of the equilibrium but also the question of the system and it’s stability. Whether it is a mathematical system or a social one, there will always be elements of instability, of questioning, which contribute as much to equilibrium as to the inherent tension, stabilising or not.

If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space.

Valérie Dantas Mota, born 1977 in São Paulo, lives and works in Paris. Master in Plastic Arts at the Santa Marcelina faculty of São Paulo. Between her undergraduate and her masters she participated in many Brazilian exhibitions following the success of her solo exhibition Primeira — united artists IV, Casa das Rosas, São Paulo in 1998. Her solo shows comprise among others the Centre Culturel de São Paulo in 1999, Species at the Officine Culturelle Uberlândia in 2003 and her two exhibitions in Paris in 2008 and 2010 at griesmar & tamer, then JTM Gallery. She participated in the 53rd salon d’art contemporain de Montrouge in 2008.

Christof Zwiener, born 1972 in Osnabrück, lives and works in Berlin. Diploma from the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Braunschweig in 2004. Among his solo exhibitions are Berlin today, Raum für Zweckfreiheit, Berlin 2012, no bronze, Torreão, Porto Alegre 2009, textum, Kunstverein Langenhagen 2008, starting at zero, Bonner Kunstverein 2006, Haus Schwartekopp und die Werksbahn, Kunstverein Arnsberg 2006, Monument, Galerie Frehrking Wiesehöfer, Cologne 2006, it was because gravity made itself master over me, Kunstverein Ulm 2005 and halbrund oder rund, je nach dem, Kunstverein Ravensburg 2004. In 2013 he participated in Indizien Für Eine Mögliche Deutsche Geschichte, Kunstverein Zurich and in Zu Gast (3) “East”, Kunstsaele, Berlin. In 2008 in Rendez- vous, MAC Lyon, in Vertrautes Terrain, ZKM Karlsruhe and in Entropie Zuhause, Sammlung Schürmann, Berlin.

A catalogue edited by the gallery will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.