Sonia
Kacem
Le
Flâneur
9
October 2015 – 15 January 2016
T 293
Via
Tribunali 293, Napoli
www.t293.it
T293
is pleased to present Le
Flâneur,
Sonia Kacem second exhibition with the gallery. Coming as a result of
a three weeks residency in Naples, the exhibition consists of an
environmental installation and a series of sculptures on wall.
All
the works composing Le
Flâneur have
been conceived and produced according to the spatial and
architectural properties of the gallery. Their conceptualization
departs from the artist’ rethinking of the social and cultural
aspects linked to awning structures and fabrics, and particularly on
their suggesting memories of a suspended and unproductive time, like
that spent on a cafe terrace during the summer.
Taking
advantage of the physical and chromatic properties of the awning
fabrics, the Swiss-Tunisian artist creates a monumental installation
that unfolds through the several rooms of the gallery. Like the
artist’ latest installation Loulou
(2014) and Bermuda
Triangle
(2015), this work speaks about Kacem obsession to turn flat materials
like fabrics into volumes invading the space. However, the
peculiarity of this installation is that here is the movement of the
texture through the space that exalts the shades of the colours
composing it, thus revealing the irregularities and labyrinthine
aspect
of the space itself.
In
order to stress out the creative possibilities of the interaction
between materials and forms, and to reflect upon how their relation
shapes our experience of time, the installation will be accompanied
by a series of sculptures on wall. Made by the same awning fabrics
that compose the installation, the sculptures also have a wooden
structure that sustains them. Their form has been inspired by a
dismantled coat hanger, collected from the street and manipulated in
the studio. Another work that will be part of the show is made by a
series of tubes of awning fabrics, arranged according to the
gradation of their colours. While keeping their functional aspect
still intact, these readymades invade the space not only with their
forms, but also with the chromatic effects resulting from the
reaction of the different fabrics to the gallery’s artificial
light.
Exactly
as these awning fabrics evoke personal memories of a time
collectively experienced, the autonomous and builded forms composing
Le
Flâneur are
meant to open the space for a bodily experience of both time and
space. Kacem’s research has always been focussed on how to capture
the action of time on the rough material. In Le
Flâneur,
this peculiar approach of the Swiss-Tunisian artist takes the form of
an environmental intervention that plays with the physical and
volumetric properties of both materials and colours. Indeed, the
whole exhibition acts like a character that, wandering all around the
city, slowly articulates the forms that inhabit the urban space, and
the colours that accompany the development of light. It is like a
body that walks with latent energy along the trails of fiction, while
aesthetically remaining in the registry of abstraction.
Courtesy,
the Artist and T293 Naples/Rome
Photos
by Maurizio Esposito