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NOCE
Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Victor Yudaev,
Pauline Zenk
Collective exhibition
28 April — 27 May 2018
Opening: 27 April from 6 to 10 p.m.
Galerie Salle des Machines
Friche la Belle de Mai
41 rue Jobin
13003 Marseille
A proposition by Triangle France - Astérides.
A marriage (noce), with its areas of tension, its oppositions, its connections, its bodies in balance that are both displayed and constrained. A rather fortuitous marriage, which is made possible by the desire of Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Victor Yudaev and Pauline Zenk to become the actors of this encounter and to show together.
Jean-Charles de Quillacq uses seemingly simple forms in order to express complex human questions. The objects that he creates, which can be abstract or figurative, are supports for questioning our own individuality. But especially for questioning what we may have in common. He turns away from what makes up our uniqueness in order to on the contrary show that which we share and which is not unique. The emotional relationship to the object, which can be sentimental or sensual, is also a central concern of his work. Jean-Charles de Quillacq is inspired by the relationship he maintains with other artworks. The myth of Pygmalion, who falls in love with his creation, is never far. In this visceral relationship to the object, the forms are the result of gestures that have been memorized, that have been mechanically repeated until they become almost automatic, until he becomes relieved of them. Not to negate himself, but to engage with a necessary distancing. Maybe in order to reach a point where saying (or not saying) “I” no longer has any importance?
Victor Yudaev sculpts objects that, taken together, make a body of work. This artistic commitment assumes the appearance of an artisan’s studio, of a stand where sculpted slippers, anthropomorphic figures and mysterious bric-a-brac are haphazardly displayed. The interaction with the exhibition set-up and its viewers are likewise integrated into Victor Yudaev’s thinking, who adds his studio work jacket to the exhibition space as if to underline that the work is never really finished. Nothing is left to happenstance. Blending fine art materials with daily objects, classical and popular cultures, the past and the present, these objects make up a sculptural ensemble that inscribes itself in the exhibition space according to a precise rhythm that the artist has chosen. At first glance, it is an enigmatic spatial logic, that is more suggestive than expressive of the relationships uniting all these objects. It is therefore up to each viewer, during their visit, to make connections and potentially fluctuating meanings that punctuate this grouping.
Pauline Zenk uses images found by chance on the internet in order to investigate at one and the same time notions of collective and private memory, as well as the conditions under which they are appropriated in a society where images are omnipresent. They may be pulled from Instagram or from historical artworks, she reappropriates these often photographic images in her paintings, in order to on the one hand reanimate the emotional aspect of these snapshots and to play with the codes of classical painting on the other. In this way, a woman in a red dress exhibits her body and covers her face with the same cloth. This displaces the site of the intimate and the erotic. It is a reversed Marilyn. Zenk distances herself from the sometimes slick quality of photographs, inventing for herself new ways of representing that are realized with academic techniques and which question the way emotions are represented in our epoch.
A marriage therefore, where during the duration of an exhibition, these works that have been brought together in a space of cohabitation and correlation, it is hoped, will mingle and dialogue.
trans. David Malek
Exhibition view, Noce, 2018 © JC Lett
Exhibition view, Noce, 2018 © JC Lett
Exhibition view, Noce, 2018 © JC Lett
Exhibition view, Noce, 2018 © JC Lett
Exhibition view, Noce, 2018 © JC Lett
Exhibition view, Noce, 2018 © JC Lett
Exhibition view, Noce, 2018 © JC Lett
Exhibition view, Noce, 2018 © JC Lett
Exhibition view, Noce, 2018 © JC Lett