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Although impossible
to reduce to any univocal reading, the works collected in the
exhibition Roses of Jericho suggest to me the notion of origin
: the primal nature of a form of the past that persists, survives
the present and crosses the centuries towards the future. Some
of the works can be perceived as archaic (Dove Allouche and Gyan
Panchal), others as primitive (Vincent Beaurin and Guillaume Leblon)
or charged with magic, artifice and mistery (Laurent Grasso, Véronique
Joumard, Pierre Vadi and Ulla von Brandenburg). These objects
of mysterious cults, usages or contemplation, play with the contrast
between rough and refined, natural and artificial, smooth and
edged in both their mode of production as in their forms, which
often reveal several technical stratifications. Amongst the materials
chosen by the artists, one can find polystyrene (derived from
petroleum), flint, soft resin (also a fossil), thermosensitive
paint, minerals, weaving and carbon prints.
In these
works, the relationship to history is hard to define : neither
backward-looking nor futuristic, they rather incarnate the mutation
of objects whose identity is both hybrid and transitory. They
evoke a persisting and circular notion of time. This is why I
entitled the exhibition with the name of that extraordinary "fossil"
plant, an archaic species existing since the dinosaurs' age and
designed to survive the harsh conditions of desertic envi-ronments.
In periods of drought, it looses most of its water and shrivels
up as if it were dead. But as the first rain fills the plant with
water, it grows green again and comes back to life. A Middle-Eastern
plant, the rose of Jericho was called after the city that constantly
rises from its own ashes.
Claire Le Restif, 12th of February 2007, Ivry-sur-Seine
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exhibition Les roses de Jéricho is realised
with the support of the CULTURESFRANCES
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The exhibition
"Roses of Jericho", curated by Claire Le Restif, is
part of a collaboration based on reciprocal carte blanche between
attitudes in Geneva and Crédac in Ivry-sur-Seine. We shall in
our turn present at Crédac an exhibition with the evocative title
"Insular Experiences", with the Chapuisat brothers,
Simon Faithfull, Hoio, Peter Regli and Thu van Tran.
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