Nicholas Byrne
Les Statues Meurent Aussi 6 Oct. - 26 Nov. 2011 Joëlle Tuerlinckx, installation view Joëlle Tuerlinckx "When men die, they enter history. When statues die, they enter art. This botany of death is what we call culture". So begins the documentary film realised by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker in 1953, Les Statues Meurent Aussi. The film is dedicated to the process of degradation and repression of African art and craft lead by the European colonisation. What follows, abstracting the film's most immediate political consequences, is a kind of existential poetics of both art and history: an object dies when the living glance trained upon it disappears. In the same way, whether through film, sculpture, drawing or painting, the work of the artists grouped together in Les Statues Meurent Aussi is an investigation into the mutability, contingency and evolution of forms. Their attitudes deal with the history of certain elements, giving them a new form and function. Whether reinvesting mundane materials such as glass or photocopied texts with a new aesthetic life, or exploring the structural language of painting, these artists conceptually and emotionally invest simple materials with a newfound poetic meaning, while offering a thoughtful meditation on the fragility of our lives and the objects that make up the world around us. Marie Lund, installation view Marie Lund The Very White Marbles, 2010 soapstone, composite stone 30 x 20 cm each approx. Nicholas Byrne, installation view Nicholas Byrne Nicholas Byrne Nicholas Byrne Elias Hansen Elias Hansen Marie Lund Joëlle Tuerlinckx Double Malevitch 'berlin berlin' digital print on paper, found paper 105 x 62 cm Joëlle Tuerlinckx Rouleau-brique noir / Rouleau-brique blanc wood, paper, black and white pigment with latex 35 x 65 x 38 cm |