[ezcol_1half]Fabrice Cazenave curated by John Marchant Gallery
8 June – 1 July 2017
John Marchant Gallery in association with Eagle Gallery is pleased to announce the first UK solo show by Fabrice Cazenave (1975, France).
Solar Cream consists of two distinct bodies of work. The first is a series of large drawings done ‘aveugle’ with the visual senses withdrawn, literally with the eyes closed during certain phases. Alongside these landscapes, Cazenave presents ‘Sliders’, a stylistically and thematically frictious parallel series of works initiated in preformed, remnant materials that are debris or by-products of other works by the artist – including drips of plaster, plastic sheeting, strips of frame – reformed and represented anew. Offering the two series together is a formal gesture – an invitation to lay aside preconception.
Cazenave’s practice often involves the access of the somatosensory system, not only by drawing with the eyes closed, but also under hypnosis, utilising the ‘the conscious perception of touch, pressure, pain, temperature, position, movement, and vibration, which arise from the muscles, joints, skin, and fascia’ in the act of drawing, sculpting and painting. His marks may represent spells or invocations or they may represent figurative tours around the internal body – the teeth, the ribs, the articulating joints – the interior landscape.
Cazenave’s drawings of the exterior landscape also form a key part of his work, represented here by one large and five medium-sized charcoal drawings. These landscapes are manifestations of an important space for the artist, which he returns to recurrently, drawing out the meanings of ‘place’ and memory. They portray a kind of spirit world, an underworld perhaps or at least woodland at night, when things are reversed and hidden. These drawings are energetic transcriptions created en plain air – the black base is laid on first, then erased during an exchange between the artist’s body and its surroundings. Sliders however are composed from ‘things left behind’, as the elements are scavenged from the artist’s own studio in a sort of beautiful, autographic assemblage – a manifestation of Žižek’s “aesthetic potential of waste” not dissimilar but distinct from Dieter Roth’s autoconstructive practices. Cazenave’s visually beautiful, balanced works however revel in the possibilities of reconfiguration, of looking anew and stripping away conception of what things are and what they are meant to be – which is ultimately where we are – forming, colliding, exploding, reforming.
Fabrice Cazenave has recently completed a large commission for Hermés Paris and presented a solo exhibition at Galerie Nivet-Carzon, Paris.
Solar Cream is part of an ongoing series of collaborations between John Marchant Gallery and Eagle Gallery, London. The next exhibition will also be a first solo show, with Alison McKenna (UK 1970) entitled A Harmony Of Opposites – works on canvas and paper July 6th – 29th.
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FABRICE CAZENAVE Sliders (21), 2015, Dried drips of coloured plaster, glue, wood, 42 x 30cm
FABRICE CAZENAVE Sliders (16), 2015, Plaster and ink on wood, 41 x 30cm
FABRICE CAZENAVE Paysage Aveugle – Large, 2015, Charcoal on 224 gsm Clairfontaine drawing paper
200 x 152cm
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