Koller, Group Show at R52L, Berlin, May 2022
“… if it is good to be recognized, it is better to be welcomed, precisely because this is something we can neither earn nor deserve.”
- Hannah Arendt, speech to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1969
Welcoming here implies the risky involvement of another in a shared space or activity or, without reference to identity, state of character, or degree of merit. To welcome someone says as much about the welcomer as the welcomed: it presents a release from the urge to transform an open space or uncertain activity into a predetermined framework or predictable process with strict boundaries to participation. This is where hospitality begins, in welcoming someone along with their insecurities, with regard to their sensitive and sensual distinctiveness, across language vocabularies, and beyond common frames of reference—and vice versa.
While Interface initially referred to a specific space, it has now come to gather a group of artists, namely Mariona Berenguer, Hannah Bohnen, Alizée Gazeau, Stefan Knauf, Linus Rauch, and Manuel Stehli. The collective formed intuitively in response to the imminent eviction from their studio spaces at Kolonnenstraße in Schöneberg when they decided to use the last months of their lease to host a dense exhibition programme with artists and performers based in Berlin and beyond. Subsequently, Interface took on a nomadic form, manifesting itself in group exhibitions with alternating participants and in versatile constellations that have journeyed so far to Polignano a Mare, Paris, and Berlin. In so doing, Interface has gradually developed a network of mutual support and impulse that continues to grow and deepen.
In their ongoing collaboration, these six artists have always maintained their distinct formal languages and material vocabularies. Heterogeneity is characteristic of the group and foundational for their artistic alliance which is predicated on mutual care as well as on criticism, on tenderness but also on tension. Beyond Interface, each artist pursues their own projects and ambitions which sometimes spring from or eventually flow into the collective. As such, Interface is living testimony to a practice of reciprocity despite differentiality and to the enduring benefits of collaborative work.
This open and generous approach to individual artistic practices also distinguishes the composition of the exhibition versa. Each artist of the collective invited one other artist in a gesture of sharing and making space with and for each other. The six artistic duos emanate from professional as well as personal backgrounds, such as shared studio spaces and studies, common roots in remote villages, mutual admiration, and intuitive understanding. To underscore the individual artistic positions and voices gathered within this exhibition, as well as their common concerns and undercurrents, each duo was invited to react and respond to a series of questions. Thus, Interface welcomes Lucia Bachner, Toulu Hassani, Nils Köpfer, Asís María, Zazzaro Otto, and Michael Tymbios.
In many ways, Interface is both symptomatic and subversive of the changes and shifts within the city of Berlin brought about by economic pressure on urban as well as cultural infrastructures. Through their collaborative exhibition practice, the collective opens up spaces to reclaim agency and to consolidate their individual positions as artists. Ultimately, this raises the question of where artistic practice ends and where it begins. And by shifting the conditions and limits of an answer to this question, what responsibilities and labours do we thereby impose on artistic practice?
Certainly, these questions have implications for me in my role as curator, too. When collaborative exhibition practices allow artists to claim their own spaces and to self-determine the presentation and context of their works, they release themselves from the predetermined frameworks and predictable processes imposed by art institutions and galleries. Rather, I was welcomed into an open space and uncertain activity within which I take on the role of both guest and host—in best company.
Lisa Deml
VERSA curated by Lisa Deml, May 2022
Salon am Moritz Platz with Interface Berlin
Text written for Off Water II at Sainte Anne Gallery
The immeasurable scale of the space-time in which we evolve requires us to permanently adjust the distance to that which surrounds us – in order to measure the scope of our impacts, the potential for actions, their possible failure and the extent of the dynamics that shape the "habitable".
Water as a major component of our terrestrial system, from its oceanic surfaces to the fauna and flora, structures our relations.
Off Water implies changes of state according to metabolic processes. These metamorphoses allow for hybridization and initiate upheaval. The artists of the exhibition deploy spaces that host the meeting of forms and affects. To leave the water implies a movement. Metaphorically, "to be out of the water" invites us to take a time out. The exhibition is composed as a territory through which the works draw the cartography of another possible space-time – hinting at that which is bigger than us, while allowing proximities and a reversal of scale.
The works that unfold in Off Water offer formal reminiscences and construct a language. Ranti Bam's ceramic surfaces alternate between solids and voids and suggest a movement of the mesh on the clay, inciting a haptic involvement. They enter into conversation with Alizée Gazeau's prints on fabric, on the surface of which the folds and undulations of fishing net meshes merge. For this second chapter of the exhibition Off Water, Mirsini Artakianou presents a new suspended sculpture where the threads merge into a sculptural ornamentation..
How long can we stay above water? Rising waters imply major upheaval. Some of the presented works accelerate natural processes, others invoke moments of absolute control and a possible swing towards capitulation. Isabel Fredeus proposes the observation of shells immersed in acidic liquids and destined to dissolve over the course of several weeks. Mariona Berenguer's light installation brushes the floor of the space, interacting with the shadow of a plant dried out by arid heat and deprived of water.
Off Water suggests a return into the aquatic. The artists of the exhibition invoke movement and fluidity.
Bianca Lee Vasquez presents an installation made of glass receptacles draining the flow of water in two umbilical centres. The activation of the installation acts as a refresh of a prenatal aquatic memory. Hannah Bohnen's works initiate a musical vibration by engraving the circular movement of a tendril in the surface. Eva Gentner's aluminium ocean buoy disrupts scale proportions, framing the movements of the performer Miriam Rose Gronwald, herself a carrier of an ambiguous future archived in embroidery.
On the floor, two works by Marina Stanimirovic extract an archaic vibration and translate it into surfaces. Like moults, the sculptures and colours evoke the fossil skins of marine anthropodes.
Off Water explores the gradual emerging of bodies out of the water. On land, aquatic reminiscences abound. Ghislaine Portalis' small glass sculptures and Laura Sebastianes' fragmented installation suggest an ultimate adjustment to spaces both immense and intimate, allowing us to measure and evaluate our language and our gestures.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Estelle Zhong Mengual, « Habiter c’est toujours habiter dans le sublime. Car c’est le sublime qui façonne l’habitable. », Apprendre à voir, Actes Sud, 2021, Paris, p.173
Texte écrit pour Off Water II à Sainte Anne Gallery
La démesure de l’espace-temps dans lequel nous évoluons nous demande l’ajustement permanent des distances avec ce qui nous entoure. Cela afin de mesurer l’envergure de nos impacts, le potentiel d’actions, leurs défaites éventuelles et l’ampleur des dynamiques qui façonnent « l’habitable ».
L’eau comme composante majeure de notre système terrestre, depuis ses surfaces océaniques jusqu’à la faune et la flore, structure nos relations.
Off Water implique des changements d’état selon des processus métaboliques. Ces métamorphoses enclenchent des hybridations et amorcent des bouleversements. Les artistes de l’exposition déploient des territoires qui abritent la rencontre de formes et d’affects. Sortir de l’eau implique un mouvement. Métaphoriquement « être hors de l’eau » invite à prendre un temps d’arrêt. L’exposition est composée comme un parcours dans lequel les œuvres dessinent la cartographie d’un autre espace-temps possible. Cela afin de faire face à ce qui est plus grand que nous, tout en permettant des proximités et un renversement d’échelle.
Les œuvres qui se déploient dans Off Water offrent des réminiscences formelles et construisent un langage. Les surfaces céramiques de Ranti Bam alternent entre pleins et vides et suggèrent le mouvement des mailles sur l’argile, invitant au corps à corps haptique. Elles entrent en conversation avec les impressions sur tissus d’Alizée Gazeau à la surface desquelles, les plis et les ondulations des mailles de filets de pêche se confondent. Pour ce deuxième chapitre de l’exposition Off Water, Mirsini Artakianou présente une nouvelle sculpture suspendue où les fils se fondent en une ornementation sculpturale.
Jusqu’à quand pourrons nous rester hors de l’eau ? La montée des eaux implique des bouleversements majeurs. Certaines œuvres accélèrent des processus naturels, d’autres activent des moments de contrôle absolu et de basculement possible vers une capitulation. Isabel Fredeus propose l’observation de coquillages qui se dissolvent dans de l’acide durant plusieurs semaines. L’installation lumineuse de Mariona Berenguer frôle le sol de l’espace en dialoguant avec l’ombre portée d’une plante desséchée par une chaleur aride et privée d’eau.
Off Water présage un retour subaquatique. Les artistes de l’exposition invitent au mouvement et à la fluidité.
Bianca Lee Vasquez présente une installation de réceptacles en verre. Le protocole d’extraction draine le flux de l’eau vers deux centres ombilicaux. L’activation du dispositif agit comme le rappel d’une mémoire aquatique prénatale.
Les œuvres d’Hannah Bohnen initient une vibration musicale en gravant dans la surface le mouvement circulaire d’une vrille. La bouée océanique en aluminium d’Eva Gentner bouleverse les rapports d’échelle, encadrant les mouvements de la performeuse Miriam Rose Gronwald, elle-même porteuse d’un futur ambigüe archivé en broderie.
Au sol, deux œuvres de Marina Stanimirovic extraient une vibration archaïque et la traduisent en surfaces. Telles des mues, les sculptures et les couleurs évoquent les peaux de fossiles d’anthropodes marins .
Off Water explore l’éruption progressive des corps hors de l’eau. Sur terre les réminiscences aquatiques sont nombreuses. Les petites sculptures en verre de Ghislaine Portalis et le dispositif fragmenté de Laura Sebastianes suggèrent un ajustement ultime aux espaces à la fois immenses et intimes, nous permettant de mesurer et d'évaluer notre langage et nos gestes.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Estelle Zhong Mengual, « Habiter c’est toujours habiter dans le sublime. Car c’est le sublime qui façonne l’habitable. », Apprendre à voir, Actes Sud, 2021, Paris, p.173
Baitball 02, exhibition views, Palazzo San Giuseppe, Polignano a Mare, Italy
January-March 2022
The second edition of the Baitball project opens its doors from January 17th to March 15th at Palazzo San Giuseppe in Polignano a Mare.
Baitball is a hybrid, a crossbreed between a long-term project art fair and a collectively curated exhibition, it is a shared dimension, a way to live and co-evolve together through differences, dreaming up new worlds to become-with-others.
*A bait ball occurs when small organisms (fish, birds, insects) move tightly compacted in a spherical formation around a common center. It is a defensive measure adopted to escape the threat of predators, but it is also a cohesion exercise enhancing the hydro-aerodynamic functions.
A coordinated bait ball shimmers in unison, hundreds or thousands of individuals move together apparently under radio control or directed by predetermined choreography, even if there is no leader or hierarchy within them.
The “balls” are formed through that spontaneous emergence known as self-organization. It emerges from the bottom upwards, it is an a-centered and non-linear phenomenon, it is an irreversible process, which thanks to the cooperative action of subsystems lead to more complex structures in the global system.
HARMONY
Publication d'Art Non linéaire, Musée Soulages, Rodez, February 2022
https://publicationdartnonlineaire.studio/iii-harmony/
HARMONY
texte écrit pour Publication d'Art Non linéaire, février 2022
La surface sur laquelle se projette la rencontre de deux mondes est un plan de contact. De part et d’autre de ce plan évoluent des univers autonomes. L’étendue de l’eau sépare l’aquatique du terrestre. Dans l’océan le son se propage plus rapidement que dans l’air. Nous sommes face à deux espaces séparés par deux temporalités différentes. Le travail artistique se répand comme une onde, créant des variations adaptées à son environnement selon un rythme clair et défini, intuitif. Il permet le dialogue entre des entités souveraines, cela en mettant en mouvement les mondes du dessous avec ceux du dessus de la surface. Les œuvres forment de nouveaux ensembles spatio-temporels réunis par contact et créent des suites de lignes d’horizon. Elles se répandent en archipels.
La rencontre se situe dans cet espace-temps de l’inframince fluctuant. C’est une analogie entre le plan de l’œuvre et celui du flot. Nous recueillons des fragments qui composent ensuite des ensembles hybrides. Il s’agit de trouver un équilibre dans la chimère. Ces ensembles se composent à l’aide d’outils simples et protéiformes qui peuvent avoir des répercussions presque à l’infini. Les mailles d’un filet, le mouvement d’une algue - Laminaria Digitata -, un négatif photographique, des branchies, le marbre, une selle de cheval, tout objet d’observation et de contact fondamental permet d’engager une rencontre, un entrelacement. L’océan est caressé de bancs de poissons, de continents plastiques diaphanes et parcouru de filets qui plongent dans la masse temporelle de ses profondeurs. Le travail artistique permet d’infléchir cette étendue fugitive, cela afin d’en révéler les vagues de surface.
Dans nos distinctions respectives, en nous connectant à ces écrans de modélisation de la relation, nous composons des ensembles. Depuis ces dichotomies initiales nous voulons tisser des entrelacs de rencontres. Cela en nous accordant à d’autres fréquences par l’intermédiaire d’outils qui nous permettent d’atteindre l’harmonie. Lorsque le filet frôle le papier, son empreinte reproduit des oscillations, évoque les ondulations scintillantes d’écailles argentées. Ces écailles font partie d’un système, elles sont imbriquées les unes dans les autres. De même, chaque maille est un réseau à travers lequel passe la matière, perdure le vide, se forme la relation.
Il se passe alors quelque chose de très élémentaire: plusieurs entités se mélangent, s’invitent et dialoguent afin de former une unité à la fois harmonieuse et plurielle.
1.Marcel Duchamp, “Inframince”
2.Donna Haraway, Le Manifeste Cyborg
3.Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 陰翳礼讃
HARMONY
text written for Publication d'Art Non linéaire, February 2022
The surface on which the meeting of two worlds is projected is a contact area. On either side of this surface, autonomous universes evolve. The expanse of water separates the aquatic from the terrestrial. In the ocean, sound propagates more rapidly than in the air. We are faced with two spaces separated by two different temporalities. Artistic work spreads like a wave, creating variations adapted to its environment according to a clear and defined, intuitive rhythm. It allows the dialogue between sovereign entities, putting in motion the worlds below with those above the surface. Artworks form new spatio-temporal ensembles united by contact and create suites of horizon lines. They disperse and diffuse in archipelagos.
The encounter is situated in this space-time of the fluctuating infrathin 1. It is an analogy between the plane of the work and that of the flow. We collect fragments which then make up hybrid ensembles. It is a question of finding a balance in the chimera 2. These ensembles are composed with simple and protean tools that can have almost infinite repercussions 3. The meshes of a net, the movement of a seaweed - Laminaria Digitata -, a photographic negative, gills, marble, a horse's saddle, any object of observation and fundamental contact allows for an encounter, an intertwining. The ocean is caressed by swarms of fish, diaphanous plastic continents and crossed by nets that plunge into the temporal mass of its depths. The artistic work allows us to inflect this fleeting expanse in order to reveal its surface waves.
In our respective distinctions, by connecting to these modelling screens of relationships, we compose ensembles. From these initial dichotomies we want to weave interlacing encounters. This is done by tuning to other frequencies through tools that allow us to achieve harmony. When the net brushes against the paper, its imprint reproduces oscillations, evoking the shimmering undulations of silver scales. These scales are part of a system, they are interwoven with each other. Similarly, each mesh is a network through which matter passes, emptiness persists, relationships are formed.
Something very elementary happens: several entities mix, invite each other and dialogue to form a unity that is both harmonious and plural.
1.Marcel Duchamp, “Infrathin”
2.Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto
3.Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 陰翳礼讃
Editorial for Harmony
Publication d'Art Non linéaire, February 2022
L’équipe curatoriale du projet UAF associée aux Amis du NMWA composée de Nathalie Herschdorfer, Marianne Dollo, Anna Labouze, Mathieu Mercier, Thomas Schlesser et Keimis Henni ont l’immense plaisir de partager le nom des trois artistes sélectionnées.
The immeasurable scale of the space-time in which we evolve requires us to permanently adjust the distance to that which surrounds us – in order to measure the scope of our impacts, the potential for actions, their possible failure and the extent of the dynamics that shape the "habitable"1.
Water as a major component of our terrestrial system, from its oceanic surfaces to the fauna and flora, structures our relations to the environment.
Off Water implies changes of state according to metabolic processes. These metamorphoses allow for hybridization and initiate upheaval. The artists of the exhibition deploy spaces that host the meeting of forms and affects. To leave the water implies a movement. Metaphorically, "to be out of the water" invites us to take a time out. The exhibition is composed as a territory through which the works draw the cartography of another possible space-time – hinting at that which is bigger than us, while allowing proximities and a reversal of scale.
The works that unfold in Off Water offer formal reminiscences and construct a language. Ranti Bam's ceramic surfaces alternate between solids and voids and suggest a movement of the mesh on the clay, inciting a haptic involvement. They enter into conversation with the printed surfaces of Alizée Gazeau's fabric sculptures, on which the meshes of nets and scales merge. Suspended throughout the exhibition, the installation by Mirsini Artakianou aligns a network of links forming an undulating sculptural space.
How long can we stay above water? Rising waters imply major upheaval. Some of the presented works accelerate natural processes, others invoke moments of absolute control and a possible swing towards capitulation. Isabel Fredeus proposes the observation of shells immersed in acidic liquids and destined to dissolve over the course of several weeks. Mariona Berenguer's light installation brushes the floor of the space, interacting with the shadow of a plant dried out by arid heat and deprived of water.
Off Water suggests a return into the aquatic. The artists of the exhibition invoke movement and fluidity. Hannah Bohnen's sculptures wrap up the continuum of time while Eva Gentner disrupts scale proportions. An aluminium ocean buoy frames the movements of the performer Miriam Rose Gronwald, herself a carrier of an ambiguous future archived in embroidery.
On the floor, two works by Marina Stanimirovic conjure a metallic vibration and translate it into surfaces folded together. Like sediments, the striations and colours remind us of an archaic trilobite skin.
Emerging from the water, we retrieve a clear sound. Laura Sebastianes presents a fragmented installation. Her sound boxes are a body of resonance in motion, suggesting an ultimate adjustment to spaces both immense and intimate, allowing us to measure and evaluate our language and our gestures.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Estelle Zhong Mengual, « Habiter c’est toujours habiter dans le sublime. Car c’est le sublime qui façonne l’habitable. », Apprendre à voir, Actes Sud, 2021, Paris, p.173
In a 1965 interview, the French writer Jean Giono expressed his vision of happiness. "Happiness is aside"1, he said, it can be born from everyday moments, often seemingly insignificant and dependent on inexplicable personal predispositions: "a sheet of paper that slips well"2 when writing, "a well executed piece of work"3, a particular feeling, the sight of an object, of a landscape, can become the catalysts of such a feeling. These moments bring an additional depth to the present, to things as they are. They open to an elsewhere that the usual glance does not perceive. This exhibition presents the works of artists who have retained such instants.
The garden hosts Phaethon Part III, an installation by Alizée Gazeau. This composition is the third iteration of the artwork. A fabric made of rhombuses and sewn leather scales located outside the exhibition space forms a surface crossed by the light, the leaves, the shadows of the day, the birds. It evokes an inner state suspended between the earth and the sky, the experience of an "absence parallel to presence"4 associated with moments of rambling, reading or falling asleep, in which one extracts themselves from the dynamics of the world.
Bianca Lee Vasquez explores the therapeutic powers of dirt. Soil High Series brings into the exhibition space a portion of fertile compost soil on which fired clay figures are installed. A substance developed by the artist, composed of soil and readily accessible commercial products which carry an active dirt bacterium, is diffused across the exhibition space. A recent discovery concerning soil microbes and mental health has highlighted the ability of mycobacterium vaccae present in soil to create a feeling of happiness by boosting the levels of serotonin and norepinephrine. By virtue of inhalation the artwork will literally be present in the body of the viewer. The installation will be activated by a performance by the artist.
Chloé Bensahel's tapestries play on the passage from the visible to the invisible. Poems written on strips of Japanese paper are encapsulated along the entire length of the weaving thread. Fragments of text escape from it and dot the surface of the fabric with random chromatic variations. The poetry is present but cannot be read. A fraction of text appears at the end of the tapestry or on the surface of the fabric to leave a part of interpretation to the spectator. The "ambiguity of reading and interpretation"5 that we are often confronted with in our relationship to the world provokes a discomfort that these works invite us to tame.
Untitled (Chorin) by Nils Köpfer evokes the blurred contours of a landscape seen from an interior. The image refers to an escape from reality, like that of a child who would squint in order to reinvent the world, or the trace of a distant memory reshaped by subjectivity. Painting is experienced by the artist as a refuge, a space that is maintained by small touches "like a garden"6. Open to the outside, he architecture points to an interconnectedness between the pictorial practice and the link to nature.
Architect Eleonora Santucci presents Les maisons que j’habite (The Houses I Live In), a series of sketches initiated in March 2020. Relying on her memory only, the architect reconstructed the structure of each room, piece of furniture and details of the apartments she has lived in since leaving her family home. "Representing these interiors meant drawing the places that define me, where each room is a world in itself."7 This series of sketches acts as a remedy to having renounced the living spaces that once constituted us.
The works of the duo Ornaghi & Prestinari punctuate the exhibition space. Funambolo, an alabaster clothespin suspended on a taut wire, seems to speak for us. Like a "visual poetry", it condenses in its form a feeling of precarious balance and existential doubt. Chapeau discreetly takes on the form of an alabaster cork placed on a beer bottle. The objects manipulated and left after use suggest in their own way the frame of a life scene and preserve the trace of a social interaction.
Charles Hascoët's paintings present fragments of life scenes in small formats that incite us to look closer. The objects and individuals represented seem to be animated by a secret will and carry in their contour the look that one would have cast on them. A sense of expectation becomes manifest in the form of a sparsely watered cactus; a lemon resting on its curvature retains the special glow of a day, a friend in a state of confidence dozes in a comfortable armchair, the shimmering colours of a bottle of Listerine revive a sense of wonder.
Livia Parmantier
1 Jean Giono, in Jean Giono s'entretient avec Claude Santelli, series « La nuit écoute », 1965
2 Ibidem
3 Ibidem
4 “Questa esperienza di assenza, parallela alla presenza […]”, [our translation], Emanuele Coccia, Filosofia della casa. Lo spazio domestico e la felicità, Einaudi, 2021, p. 92
5. Interview with artist Chloé Bensahel, June 17, 2021
6. Interview with artist Nils Köpfer, June 29, 2021
7 Eleonora Santucci, Les maisons que j’habite, 2021
1. "I started this period in Brittany, with my grandmother. I left for some quiet seclusion and worked with what I found there, mostly old fabrics (and an old boat cover). Perhaps a form of resilience, in my case, an almost total overhaul of my practice began. Then, in the midst of this chaos and new uncertainties, I moved to Berlin at the end of 2020."
https://interface-art.space/2021/06/interfaces-or-those-who-caress-the-surface-curated-by-alizee-gazeau/
Where abscissa and ordinate axes meet, there are points of contact. From these landmarks, territories are created that continually communicate, interpenetrate and move away from each other. We approach these spaces, by creating zones punctuated by our meetings and exchanges. These places where worlds brush against each other are infrathin 1 interfaces, membranes which embrace our interconnections.
First, there is the world’s vast space. From its maritime vibrations to the rhythm of the swell on its surface. There are telluric expanses pierced by roots and architectural perspectives. Within them, human and non-human skins deploy bodily and sensual conversations. The beauty of the notion of interface is that it proposes to reconsider the artwork as a surface accessible from its positive and negative sides. It opens up a space which escapes planarity, which draws its potentialities from a depth of field. As interfaces, artworks open worlds. Acting both as a screen and as a meeting place, they offer spaces of creation, invite us to penetrate and animate them with our interactions.
The idea of a permeability of interfaces is the key to this exhibition. The artists presented create spaces allowing for passages, for encounters. Their works call for a haptic experience.
Which is the surface, then, that caresses that of the other?
Within the exhibition space, itself an interface, the artists offer multiple approaches to this notion of permeability. When two hands move towards the surface of a plane, the skin itself becomes the surface through which the conversation with the world can take place. A dialectic thus opens, from the inner space towards an evoked place. The works build structures and create spaces of circulation and intimacy that resist us as much as they invite us in. In some, surfaces can be passed through in a vibratory and organic initiation. The artists stretch the plane of the exhibition towards an else-where that envelops us from the distant elsewhere in which it resides. The permeability of the presented surfaces allows us to envision that which, however infinitely distant, makes a step towards us. The interface can thus be seen as a potential for territorialization. The artists create immanent planes acting both as relics and potential futures, and these fragments scattered throughout the exhibition promise metamorphoses. The works gathered in this interior/exterior space formulate and offer access to intuitions which emerged from an embrace with the « surface’s deep essence »2.
The exhibition proposes to envisage the depth of surfaces which we thought were impermeable. The artists reveal what lies beyond the surface of the works. Yet to caress the surface, one must be there, and stand prepared for an encounter. In order to open fundamental conversations and invite empathy towards species and worlds.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Marcel Duchamp
2 三島 由紀夫, Mishima Yukio
Dièse, 2020-2021, 78 participants, 76 words
Programme Spécial, La Méditerranée, Bubenberg, June 2020, Paris
Our land is an immanent island framed by the sea. On the waves, conscious of our common destiny, we are standing together at the bow of a ship set out on a reconnaissance mission. The spaces traced by our pencil strokes compose superimposed realities.
One reality unites us all: an insular land surrounded by infinite foam. This land we walk on, inhabit, describe, draw, photograph, measure, takes shape within us and is defined by all the events we share, experience, archive. We state that our intuitions emerge in the tangible world to unite with it and to form one same entity. As we create, we inflect the spacetime continuum, from our inner realities towards external dynamics.
We must reconnoiter this land we live on, starting by accepting “ the absolute non-reponse”1, that is to say, “the infinite without a path"2.
Recognizing each other’s perspectives defines new terms towards creating a language that will bring us together around current issues, reflections and collective artworks. In 1978, Nelson Goodman already wrote that taking “water from scattered places” wasn’t enough, “rather, we must coordinate the samples”3.
At last, we must reaffirm the idea of unity and abolish any opposition between what we can reality and ourselves. The world is not finite, it cannot be. Time is circular, and as a waterspouts suck up the sky to throw it into the ocean, past continually rushes towards future in a permanent to-and-fro. From ancestral times to the present day, our earth, like any work of art, continually recreates itself. We propose to acknowledge that every thought emits a new world, to recognize art as a means of rediscovery and as a driving force. To recognize, also that our earth exists independently of Humankind, and that if it exists independently, to affirm that it does not confront us. We have the opportunity to reinvent our relationship to the world by rethinking and re-founding our creative acts, towards an art that extends its own definition and creates new space-times.
We ought to save the world’s soul, by preserving it in our memories, worlds in themselves. We are in perpetual motion, in permanent reinvention. Subjected to climate change just as we are to multiple intuitions.
Recognition means finding new ways of apprehending reality, new ways of being present in the face of an imminent future. In order to retain what must be retained and to let the sea wash away what must not be pursued, we must go beyond our finitudes, raise anchor, cast off and sail towards a collective destiny. Recognition is the intuition that there remains places to discover, thoughts to build, explorations to undertake, together.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Simon Hantai
2 Pablo Neruda
3 Nelson Goodman
Residency, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 2019-2020
But are we the only dreamed one?, curated by Faidra Vasileiadou
Daily Lazy Athens, 2019
http://www.daily-lazy.com/2019/10/but-are-we-only-dreamed-ones-at-daily.html
Joya: AiR + Ecologia Residency, Sierra Maria Los Velez, 2019
https://joya-air.org/artist/2019/4/22/joya-air-alize-gazeau-france
Publication d'Art Non linéaire, Horizons, 2018 with Bianca Lee Vasquez
Olea Europaea series
Residency at Fondation Hartung Bergman, Antibes, 2018
Ikaria, Artemis Studio Residency, 2018
Koller, Group Show at R52L, Berlin, May 2022
“… if it is good to be recognized, it is better to be welcomed, precisely because this is something we can neither earn nor deserve.”
- Hannah Arendt, speech to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1969
Welcoming here implies the risky involvement of another in a shared space or activity or, without reference to identity, state of character, or degree of merit. To welcome someone says as much about the welcomer as the welcomed: it presents a release from the urge to transform an open space or uncertain activity into a predetermined framework or predictable process with strict boundaries to participation. This is where hospitality begins, in welcoming someone along with their insecurities, with regard to their sensitive and sensual distinctiveness, across language vocabularies, and beyond common frames of reference—and vice versa.
While Interface initially referred to a specific space, it has now come to gather a group of artists, namely Mariona Berenguer, Hannah Bohnen, Alizée Gazeau, Stefan Knauf, Linus Rauch, and Manuel Stehli. The collective formed intuitively in response to the imminent eviction from their studio spaces at Kolonnenstraße in Schöneberg when they decided to use the last months of their lease to host a dense exhibition programme with artists and performers based in Berlin and beyond. Subsequently, Interface took on a nomadic form, manifesting itself in group exhibitions with alternating participants and in versatile constellations that have journeyed so far to Polignano a Mare, Paris, and Berlin. In so doing, Interface has gradually developed a network of mutual support and impulse that continues to grow and deepen.
In their ongoing collaboration, these six artists have always maintained their distinct formal languages and material vocabularies. Heterogeneity is characteristic of the group and foundational for their artistic alliance which is predicated on mutual care as well as on criticism, on tenderness but also on tension. Beyond Interface, each artist pursues their own projects and ambitions which sometimes spring from or eventually flow into the collective. As such, Interface is living testimony to a practice of reciprocity despite differentiality and to the enduring benefits of collaborative work.
This open and generous approach to individual artistic practices also distinguishes the composition of the exhibition versa. Each artist of the collective invited one other artist in a gesture of sharing and making space with and for each other. The six artistic duos emanate from professional as well as personal backgrounds, such as shared studio spaces and studies, common roots in remote villages, mutual admiration, and intuitive understanding. To underscore the individual artistic positions and voices gathered within this exhibition, as well as their common concerns and undercurrents, each duo was invited to react and respond to a series of questions. Thus, Interface welcomes Lucia Bachner, Toulu Hassani, Nils Köpfer, Asís María, Zazzaro Otto, and Michael Tymbios.
In many ways, Interface is both symptomatic and subversive of the changes and shifts within the city of Berlin brought about by economic pressure on urban as well as cultural infrastructures. Through their collaborative exhibition practice, the collective opens up spaces to reclaim agency and to consolidate their individual positions as artists. Ultimately, this raises the question of where artistic practice ends and where it begins. And by shifting the conditions and limits of an answer to this question, what responsibilities and labours do we thereby impose on artistic practice?
Certainly, these questions have implications for me in my role as curator, too. When collaborative exhibition practices allow artists to claim their own spaces and to self-determine the presentation and context of their works, they release themselves from the predetermined frameworks and predictable processes imposed by art institutions and galleries. Rather, I was welcomed into an open space and uncertain activity within which I take on the role of both guest and host—in best company.
Lisa Deml
VERSA curated by Lisa Deml, May 2022
Salon am Moritz Platz with Interface Berlin
Text written for Off Water II at Sainte Anne Gallery
The immeasurable scale of the space-time in which we evolve requires us to permanently adjust the distance to that which surrounds us – in order to measure the scope of our impacts, the potential for actions, their possible failure and the extent of the dynamics that shape the "habitable".
Water as a major component of our terrestrial system, from its oceanic surfaces to the fauna and flora, structures our relations.
Off Water implies changes of state according to metabolic processes. These metamorphoses allow for hybridization and initiate upheaval. The artists of the exhibition deploy spaces that host the meeting of forms and affects. To leave the water implies a movement. Metaphorically, "to be out of the water" invites us to take a time out. The exhibition is composed as a territory through which the works draw the cartography of another possible space-time – hinting at that which is bigger than us, while allowing proximities and a reversal of scale.
The works that unfold in Off Water offer formal reminiscences and construct a language. Ranti Bam's ceramic surfaces alternate between solids and voids and suggest a movement of the mesh on the clay, inciting a haptic involvement. They enter into conversation with Alizée Gazeau's prints on fabric, on the surface of which the folds and undulations of fishing net meshes merge. For this second chapter of the exhibition Off Water, Mirsini Artakianou presents a new suspended sculpture where the threads merge into a sculptural ornamentation..
How long can we stay above water? Rising waters imply major upheaval. Some of the presented works accelerate natural processes, others invoke moments of absolute control and a possible swing towards capitulation. Isabel Fredeus proposes the observation of shells immersed in acidic liquids and destined to dissolve over the course of several weeks. Mariona Berenguer's light installation brushes the floor of the space, interacting with the shadow of a plant dried out by arid heat and deprived of water.
Off Water suggests a return into the aquatic. The artists of the exhibition invoke movement and fluidity.
Bianca Lee Vasquez presents an installation made of glass receptacles draining the flow of water in two umbilical centres. The activation of the installation acts as a refresh of a prenatal aquatic memory. Hannah Bohnen's works initiate a musical vibration by engraving the circular movement of a tendril in the surface. Eva Gentner's aluminium ocean buoy disrupts scale proportions, framing the movements of the performer Miriam Rose Gronwald, herself a carrier of an ambiguous future archived in embroidery.
On the floor, two works by Marina Stanimirovic extract an archaic vibration and translate it into surfaces. Like moults, the sculptures and colours evoke the fossil skins of marine anthropodes.
Off Water explores the gradual emerging of bodies out of the water. On land, aquatic reminiscences abound. Ghislaine Portalis' small glass sculptures and Laura Sebastianes' fragmented installation suggest an ultimate adjustment to spaces both immense and intimate, allowing us to measure and evaluate our language and our gestures.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Estelle Zhong Mengual, « Habiter c’est toujours habiter dans le sublime. Car c’est le sublime qui façonne l’habitable. », Apprendre à voir, Actes Sud, 2021, Paris, p.173
Texte écrit pour Off Water II à Sainte Anne Gallery
La démesure de l’espace-temps dans lequel nous évoluons nous demande l’ajustement permanent des distances avec ce qui nous entoure. Cela afin de mesurer l’envergure de nos impacts, le potentiel d’actions, leurs défaites éventuelles et l’ampleur des dynamiques qui façonnent « l’habitable ».
L’eau comme composante majeure de notre système terrestre, depuis ses surfaces océaniques jusqu’à la faune et la flore, structure nos relations.
Off Water implique des changements d’état selon des processus métaboliques. Ces métamorphoses enclenchent des hybridations et amorcent des bouleversements. Les artistes de l’exposition déploient des territoires qui abritent la rencontre de formes et d’affects. Sortir de l’eau implique un mouvement. Métaphoriquement « être hors de l’eau » invite à prendre un temps d’arrêt. L’exposition est composée comme un parcours dans lequel les œuvres dessinent la cartographie d’un autre espace-temps possible. Cela afin de faire face à ce qui est plus grand que nous, tout en permettant des proximités et un renversement d’échelle.
Les œuvres qui se déploient dans Off Water offrent des réminiscences formelles et construisent un langage. Les surfaces céramiques de Ranti Bam alternent entre pleins et vides et suggèrent le mouvement des mailles sur l’argile, invitant au corps à corps haptique. Elles entrent en conversation avec les impressions sur tissus d’Alizée Gazeau à la surface desquelles, les plis et les ondulations des mailles de filets de pêche se confondent. Pour ce deuxième chapitre de l’exposition Off Water, Mirsini Artakianou présente une nouvelle sculpture suspendue où les fils se fondent en une ornementation sculpturale.
Jusqu’à quand pourrons nous rester hors de l’eau ? La montée des eaux implique des bouleversements majeurs. Certaines œuvres accélèrent des processus naturels, d’autres activent des moments de contrôle absolu et de basculement possible vers une capitulation. Isabel Fredeus propose l’observation de coquillages qui se dissolvent dans de l’acide durant plusieurs semaines. L’installation lumineuse de Mariona Berenguer frôle le sol de l’espace en dialoguant avec l’ombre portée d’une plante desséchée par une chaleur aride et privée d’eau.
Off Water présage un retour subaquatique. Les artistes de l’exposition invitent au mouvement et à la fluidité.
Bianca Lee Vasquez présente une installation de réceptacles en verre. Le protocole d’extraction draine le flux de l’eau vers deux centres ombilicaux. L’activation du dispositif agit comme le rappel d’une mémoire aquatique prénatale.
Les œuvres d’Hannah Bohnen initient une vibration musicale en gravant dans la surface le mouvement circulaire d’une vrille. La bouée océanique en aluminium d’Eva Gentner bouleverse les rapports d’échelle, encadrant les mouvements de la performeuse Miriam Rose Gronwald, elle-même porteuse d’un futur ambigüe archivé en broderie.
Au sol, deux œuvres de Marina Stanimirovic extraient une vibration archaïque et la traduisent en surfaces. Telles des mues, les sculptures et les couleurs évoquent les peaux de fossiles d’anthropodes marins .
Off Water explore l’éruption progressive des corps hors de l’eau. Sur terre les réminiscences aquatiques sont nombreuses. Les petites sculptures en verre de Ghislaine Portalis et le dispositif fragmenté de Laura Sebastianes suggèrent un ajustement ultime aux espaces à la fois immenses et intimes, nous permettant de mesurer et d'évaluer notre langage et nos gestes.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Estelle Zhong Mengual, « Habiter c’est toujours habiter dans le sublime. Car c’est le sublime qui façonne l’habitable. », Apprendre à voir, Actes Sud, 2021, Paris, p.173
Baitball 02, exhibition views, Palazzo San Giuseppe, Polignano a Mare, Italy
January-March 2022
The second edition of the Baitball project opens its doors from January 17th to March 15th at Palazzo San Giuseppe in Polignano a Mare.
Baitball is a hybrid, a crossbreed between a long-term project art fair and a collectively curated exhibition, it is a shared dimension, a way to live and co-evolve together through differences, dreaming up new worlds to become-with-others.
*A bait ball occurs when small organisms (fish, birds, insects) move tightly compacted in a spherical formation around a common center. It is a defensive measure adopted to escape the threat of predators, but it is also a cohesion exercise enhancing the hydro-aerodynamic functions.
A coordinated bait ball shimmers in unison, hundreds or thousands of individuals move together apparently under radio control or directed by predetermined choreography, even if there is no leader or hierarchy within them.
The “balls” are formed through that spontaneous emergence known as self-organization. It emerges from the bottom upwards, it is an a-centered and non-linear phenomenon, it is an irreversible process, which thanks to the cooperative action of subsystems lead to more complex structures in the global system.
HARMONY
Publication d'Art Non linéaire, Musée Soulages, Rodez, February 2022
https://publicationdartnonlineaire.studio/iii-harmony/
HARMONY
texte écrit pour Publication d'Art Non linéaire, février 2022
La surface sur laquelle se projette la rencontre de deux mondes est un plan de contact. De part et d’autre de ce plan évoluent des univers autonomes. L’étendue de l’eau sépare l’aquatique du terrestre. Dans l’océan le son se propage plus rapidement que dans l’air. Nous sommes face à deux espaces séparés par deux temporalités différentes. Le travail artistique se répand comme une onde, créant des variations adaptées à son environnement selon un rythme clair et défini, intuitif. Il permet le dialogue entre des entités souveraines, cela en mettant en mouvement les mondes du dessous avec ceux du dessus de la surface. Les œuvres forment de nouveaux ensembles spatio-temporels réunis par contact et créent des suites de lignes d’horizon. Elles se répandent en archipels.
La rencontre se situe dans cet espace-temps de l’inframince fluctuant. C’est une analogie entre le plan de l’œuvre et celui du flot. Nous recueillons des fragments qui composent ensuite des ensembles hybrides. Il s’agit de trouver un équilibre dans la chimère. Ces ensembles se composent à l’aide d’outils simples et protéiformes qui peuvent avoir des répercussions presque à l’infini. Les mailles d’un filet, le mouvement d’une algue - Laminaria Digitata -, un négatif photographique, des branchies, le marbre, une selle de cheval, tout objet d’observation et de contact fondamental permet d’engager une rencontre, un entrelacement. L’océan est caressé de bancs de poissons, de continents plastiques diaphanes et parcouru de filets qui plongent dans la masse temporelle de ses profondeurs. Le travail artistique permet d’infléchir cette étendue fugitive, cela afin d’en révéler les vagues de surface.
Dans nos distinctions respectives, en nous connectant à ces écrans de modélisation de la relation, nous composons des ensembles. Depuis ces dichotomies initiales nous voulons tisser des entrelacs de rencontres. Cela en nous accordant à d’autres fréquences par l’intermédiaire d’outils qui nous permettent d’atteindre l’harmonie. Lorsque le filet frôle le papier, son empreinte reproduit des oscillations, évoque les ondulations scintillantes d’écailles argentées. Ces écailles font partie d’un système, elles sont imbriquées les unes dans les autres. De même, chaque maille est un réseau à travers lequel passe la matière, perdure le vide, se forme la relation.
Il se passe alors quelque chose de très élémentaire: plusieurs entités se mélangent, s’invitent et dialoguent afin de former une unité à la fois harmonieuse et plurielle.
1.Marcel Duchamp, “Inframince”
2.Donna Haraway, Le Manifeste Cyborg
3.Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 陰翳礼讃
HARMONY
text written for Publication d'Art Non linéaire, February 2022
The surface on which the meeting of two worlds is projected is a contact area. On either side of this surface, autonomous universes evolve. The expanse of water separates the aquatic from the terrestrial. In the ocean, sound propagates more rapidly than in the air. We are faced with two spaces separated by two different temporalities. Artistic work spreads like a wave, creating variations adapted to its environment according to a clear and defined, intuitive rhythm. It allows the dialogue between sovereign entities, putting in motion the worlds below with those above the surface. Artworks form new spatio-temporal ensembles united by contact and create suites of horizon lines. They disperse and diffuse in archipelagos.
The encounter is situated in this space-time of the fluctuating infrathin 1. It is an analogy between the plane of the work and that of the flow. We collect fragments which then make up hybrid ensembles. It is a question of finding a balance in the chimera 2. These ensembles are composed with simple and protean tools that can have almost infinite repercussions 3. The meshes of a net, the movement of a seaweed - Laminaria Digitata -, a photographic negative, gills, marble, a horse's saddle, any object of observation and fundamental contact allows for an encounter, an intertwining. The ocean is caressed by swarms of fish, diaphanous plastic continents and crossed by nets that plunge into the temporal mass of its depths. The artistic work allows us to inflect this fleeting expanse in order to reveal its surface waves.
In our respective distinctions, by connecting to these modelling screens of relationships, we compose ensembles. From these initial dichotomies we want to weave interlacing encounters. This is done by tuning to other frequencies through tools that allow us to achieve harmony. When the net brushes against the paper, its imprint reproduces oscillations, evoking the shimmering undulations of silver scales. These scales are part of a system, they are interwoven with each other. Similarly, each mesh is a network through which matter passes, emptiness persists, relationships are formed.
Something very elementary happens: several entities mix, invite each other and dialogue to form a unity that is both harmonious and plural.
1.Marcel Duchamp, “Infrathin”
2.Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto
3.Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 陰翳礼讃
Editorial for Harmony
Publication d'Art Non linéaire, February 2022
L’équipe curatoriale du projet UAF associée aux Amis du NMWA composée de Nathalie Herschdorfer, Marianne Dollo, Anna Labouze, Mathieu Mercier, Thomas Schlesser et Keimis Henni ont l’immense plaisir de partager le nom des trois artistes sélectionnées.
The immeasurable scale of the space-time in which we evolve requires us to permanently adjust the distance to that which surrounds us – in order to measure the scope of our impacts, the potential for actions, their possible failure and the extent of the dynamics that shape the "habitable"1.
Water as a major component of our terrestrial system, from its oceanic surfaces to the fauna and flora, structures our relations to the environment.
Off Water implies changes of state according to metabolic processes. These metamorphoses allow for hybridization and initiate upheaval. The artists of the exhibition deploy spaces that host the meeting of forms and affects. To leave the water implies a movement. Metaphorically, "to be out of the water" invites us to take a time out. The exhibition is composed as a territory through which the works draw the cartography of another possible space-time – hinting at that which is bigger than us, while allowing proximities and a reversal of scale.
The works that unfold in Off Water offer formal reminiscences and construct a language. Ranti Bam's ceramic surfaces alternate between solids and voids and suggest a movement of the mesh on the clay, inciting a haptic involvement. They enter into conversation with the printed surfaces of Alizée Gazeau's fabric sculptures, on which the meshes of nets and scales merge. Suspended throughout the exhibition, the installation by Mirsini Artakianou aligns a network of links forming an undulating sculptural space.
How long can we stay above water? Rising waters imply major upheaval. Some of the presented works accelerate natural processes, others invoke moments of absolute control and a possible swing towards capitulation. Isabel Fredeus proposes the observation of shells immersed in acidic liquids and destined to dissolve over the course of several weeks. Mariona Berenguer's light installation brushes the floor of the space, interacting with the shadow of a plant dried out by arid heat and deprived of water.
Off Water suggests a return into the aquatic. The artists of the exhibition invoke movement and fluidity. Hannah Bohnen's sculptures wrap up the continuum of time while Eva Gentner disrupts scale proportions. An aluminium ocean buoy frames the movements of the performer Miriam Rose Gronwald, herself a carrier of an ambiguous future archived in embroidery.
On the floor, two works by Marina Stanimirovic conjure a metallic vibration and translate it into surfaces folded together. Like sediments, the striations and colours remind us of an archaic trilobite skin.
Emerging from the water, we retrieve a clear sound. Laura Sebastianes presents a fragmented installation. Her sound boxes are a body of resonance in motion, suggesting an ultimate adjustment to spaces both immense and intimate, allowing us to measure and evaluate our language and our gestures.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Estelle Zhong Mengual, « Habiter c’est toujours habiter dans le sublime. Car c’est le sublime qui façonne l’habitable. », Apprendre à voir, Actes Sud, 2021, Paris, p.173
In a 1965 interview, the French writer Jean Giono expressed his vision of happiness. "Happiness is aside"1, he said, it can be born from everyday moments, often seemingly insignificant and dependent on inexplicable personal predispositions: "a sheet of paper that slips well"2 when writing, "a well executed piece of work"3, a particular feeling, the sight of an object, of a landscape, can become the catalysts of such a feeling. These moments bring an additional depth to the present, to things as they are. They open to an elsewhere that the usual glance does not perceive. This exhibition presents the works of artists who have retained such instants.
The garden hosts Phaethon Part III, an installation by Alizée Gazeau. This composition is the third iteration of the artwork. A fabric made of rhombuses and sewn leather scales located outside the exhibition space forms a surface crossed by the light, the leaves, the shadows of the day, the birds. It evokes an inner state suspended between the earth and the sky, the experience of an "absence parallel to presence"4 associated with moments of rambling, reading or falling asleep, in which one extracts themselves from the dynamics of the world.
Bianca Lee Vasquez explores the therapeutic powers of dirt. Soil High Series brings into the exhibition space a portion of fertile compost soil on which fired clay figures are installed. A substance developed by the artist, composed of soil and readily accessible commercial products which carry an active dirt bacterium, is diffused across the exhibition space. A recent discovery concerning soil microbes and mental health has highlighted the ability of mycobacterium vaccae present in soil to create a feeling of happiness by boosting the levels of serotonin and norepinephrine. By virtue of inhalation the artwork will literally be present in the body of the viewer. The installation will be activated by a performance by the artist.
Chloé Bensahel's tapestries play on the passage from the visible to the invisible. Poems written on strips of Japanese paper are encapsulated along the entire length of the weaving thread. Fragments of text escape from it and dot the surface of the fabric with random chromatic variations. The poetry is present but cannot be read. A fraction of text appears at the end of the tapestry or on the surface of the fabric to leave a part of interpretation to the spectator. The "ambiguity of reading and interpretation"5 that we are often confronted with in our relationship to the world provokes a discomfort that these works invite us to tame.
Untitled (Chorin) by Nils Köpfer evokes the blurred contours of a landscape seen from an interior. The image refers to an escape from reality, like that of a child who would squint in order to reinvent the world, or the trace of a distant memory reshaped by subjectivity. Painting is experienced by the artist as a refuge, a space that is maintained by small touches "like a garden"6. Open to the outside, he architecture points to an interconnectedness between the pictorial practice and the link to nature.
Architect Eleonora Santucci presents Les maisons que j’habite (The Houses I Live In), a series of sketches initiated in March 2020. Relying on her memory only, the architect reconstructed the structure of each room, piece of furniture and details of the apartments she has lived in since leaving her family home. "Representing these interiors meant drawing the places that define me, where each room is a world in itself."7 This series of sketches acts as a remedy to having renounced the living spaces that once constituted us.
The works of the duo Ornaghi & Prestinari punctuate the exhibition space. Funambolo, an alabaster clothespin suspended on a taut wire, seems to speak for us. Like a "visual poetry", it condenses in its form a feeling of precarious balance and existential doubt. Chapeau discreetly takes on the form of an alabaster cork placed on a beer bottle. The objects manipulated and left after use suggest in their own way the frame of a life scene and preserve the trace of a social interaction.
Charles Hascoët's paintings present fragments of life scenes in small formats that incite us to look closer. The objects and individuals represented seem to be animated by a secret will and carry in their contour the look that one would have cast on them. A sense of expectation becomes manifest in the form of a sparsely watered cactus; a lemon resting on its curvature retains the special glow of a day, a friend in a state of confidence dozes in a comfortable armchair, the shimmering colours of a bottle of Listerine revive a sense of wonder.
Livia Parmantier
1 Jean Giono, in Jean Giono s'entretient avec Claude Santelli, series « La nuit écoute », 1965
2 Ibidem
3 Ibidem
4 “Questa esperienza di assenza, parallela alla presenza […]”, [our translation], Emanuele Coccia, Filosofia della casa. Lo spazio domestico e la felicità, Einaudi, 2021, p. 92
5. Interview with artist Chloé Bensahel, June 17, 2021
6. Interview with artist Nils Köpfer, June 29, 2021
7 Eleonora Santucci, Les maisons que j’habite, 2021
1. "I started this period in Brittany, with my grandmother. I left for some quiet seclusion and worked with what I found there, mostly old fabrics (and an old boat cover). Perhaps a form of resilience, in my case, an almost total overhaul of my practice began. Then, in the midst of this chaos and new uncertainties, I moved to Berlin at the end of 2020."
https://interface-art.space/2021/06/interfaces-or-those-who-caress-the-surface-curated-by-alizee-gazeau/
Where abscissa and ordinate axes meet, there are points of contact. From these landmarks, territories are created that continually communicate, interpenetrate and move away from each other. We approach these spaces, by creating zones punctuated by our meetings and exchanges. These places where worlds brush against each other are infrathin 1 interfaces, membranes which embrace our interconnections.
First, there is the world’s vast space. From its maritime vibrations to the rhythm of the swell on its surface. There are telluric expanses pierced by roots and architectural perspectives. Within them, human and non-human skins deploy bodily and sensual conversations. The beauty of the notion of interface is that it proposes to reconsider the artwork as a surface accessible from its positive and negative sides. It opens up a space which escapes planarity, which draws its potentialities from a depth of field. As interfaces, artworks open worlds. Acting both as a screen and as a meeting place, they offer spaces of creation, invite us to penetrate and animate them with our interactions.
The idea of a permeability of interfaces is the key to this exhibition. The artists presented create spaces allowing for passages, for encounters. Their works call for a haptic experience.
Which is the surface, then, that caresses that of the other?
Within the exhibition space, itself an interface, the artists offer multiple approaches to this notion of permeability. When two hands move towards the surface of a plane, the skin itself becomes the surface through which the conversation with the world can take place. A dialectic thus opens, from the inner space towards an evoked place. The works build structures and create spaces of circulation and intimacy that resist us as much as they invite us in. In some, surfaces can be passed through in a vibratory and organic initiation. The artists stretch the plane of the exhibition towards an else-where that envelops us from the distant elsewhere in which it resides. The permeability of the presented surfaces allows us to envision that which, however infinitely distant, makes a step towards us. The interface can thus be seen as a potential for territorialization. The artists create immanent planes acting both as relics and potential futures, and these fragments scattered throughout the exhibition promise metamorphoses. The works gathered in this interior/exterior space formulate and offer access to intuitions which emerged from an embrace with the « surface’s deep essence »2.
The exhibition proposes to envisage the depth of surfaces which we thought were impermeable. The artists reveal what lies beyond the surface of the works. Yet to caress the surface, one must be there, and stand prepared for an encounter. In order to open fundamental conversations and invite empathy towards species and worlds.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Marcel Duchamp
2 三島 由紀夫, Mishima Yukio
Dièse, 2020-2021, 78 participants, 76 words
Programme Spécial, La Méditerranée, Bubenberg, June 2020, Paris
Our land is an immanent island framed by the sea. On the waves, conscious of our common destiny, we are standing together at the bow of a ship set out on a reconnaissance mission. The spaces traced by our pencil strokes compose superimposed realities.
One reality unites us all: an insular land surrounded by infinite foam. This land we walk on, inhabit, describe, draw, photograph, measure, takes shape within us and is defined by all the events we share, experience, archive. We state that our intuitions emerge in the tangible world to unite with it and to form one same entity. As we create, we inflect the spacetime continuum, from our inner realities towards external dynamics.
We must reconnoiter this land we live on, starting by accepting “ the absolute non-reponse”1, that is to say, “the infinite without a path"2.
Recognizing each other’s perspectives defines new terms towards creating a language that will bring us together around current issues, reflections and collective artworks. In 1978, Nelson Goodman already wrote that taking “water from scattered places” wasn’t enough, “rather, we must coordinate the samples”3.
At last, we must reaffirm the idea of unity and abolish any opposition between what we can reality and ourselves. The world is not finite, it cannot be. Time is circular, and as a waterspouts suck up the sky to throw it into the ocean, past continually rushes towards future in a permanent to-and-fro. From ancestral times to the present day, our earth, like any work of art, continually recreates itself. We propose to acknowledge that every thought emits a new world, to recognize art as a means of rediscovery and as a driving force. To recognize, also that our earth exists independently of Humankind, and that if it exists independently, to affirm that it does not confront us. We have the opportunity to reinvent our relationship to the world by rethinking and re-founding our creative acts, towards an art that extends its own definition and creates new space-times.
We ought to save the world’s soul, by preserving it in our memories, worlds in themselves. We are in perpetual motion, in permanent reinvention. Subjected to climate change just as we are to multiple intuitions.
Recognition means finding new ways of apprehending reality, new ways of being present in the face of an imminent future. In order to retain what must be retained and to let the sea wash away what must not be pursued, we must go beyond our finitudes, raise anchor, cast off and sail towards a collective destiny. Recognition is the intuition that there remains places to discover, thoughts to build, explorations to undertake, together.
Alizée Gazeau
1 Simon Hantai
2 Pablo Neruda
3 Nelson Goodman
Residency, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 2019-2020
But are we the only dreamed one?, curated by Faidra Vasileiadou
Daily Lazy Athens, 2019
http://www.daily-lazy.com/2019/10/but-are-we-only-dreamed-ones-at-daily.html
Joya: AiR + Ecologia Residency, Sierra Maria Los Velez, 2019
https://joya-air.org/artist/2019/4/22/joya-air-alize-gazeau-france
Publication d'Art Non linéaire, Horizons, 2018 with Bianca Lee Vasquez
Olea Europaea series
Residency at Fondation Hartung Bergman, Antibes, 2018
Ikaria, Artemis Studio Residency, 2018