‘Dans un Monde Magnifique et Furieux’, the exhibition on view at Dvir Gallery Brussels, borrows its title from a book by Platonov – a Russian communist writer whose work reveals a constant observation of beauty in humanity and in the gestures of everyday life, with a manifest preponderance of the dialectics between nature and science, man and machine, imagination and consciousness. ‘Dans un Monde Magnifique et Furieux’ is a group show of six artists that, through political and social as well as lyrical and philosophical approaches, offers the experience of a poetic vision of a world that is at times tragic.
If on the one hand the aim of this exhibition is to challenge the perception of the spectator in the creation of meaning, on the other, David Maljkovic reminds us of the need for the registration and printing of memories that, in layers, are built in the world. Latifa Echakch, an artist of Moroccan origin, questions in her painting Derives the universally recognized geometric motifs of the Islamic Art, here deconstructed and brought to contemporary abstract language.
Man’s relationship with the world and with others is the continuing theme of this Monde Magnifique et Furieux that is present in the strong images created by the Israeli-born artist Yudith Levin. Her paintings with acrylic strokes of color and movement lay bare the stark reality of the Hawara checkpoint, a station for the control of Palestinian citizens by Israeli forces in which several incidents of violence have occurred since the year 2000.
In a more comprehensive and metaphorical way, Mircea Cantor addresses the relation between generosity – our daily bread – and the distrust inherent in human beings – when the bread is struck by the knife drowned in salt. It is also interesting to note the relation between bread and salt, which takes us to the notion of work – salary.
In the third room of the gallery, Shilpa Gupta’s 24:00:01 involves us in a temporal experience, where a flap display with broken phrases and words provides multiple meanings, becoming a 30-minute text with questionings of the self, the other, and the ‘we’ as participants in the origin and construction of the world. The words, sometimes without vowels or out of order, challenge our perception, which quickly places them in the right order or gives them meaning.
“300000 YEARS AGO
3000000 YEARS AGO
WE H D
WE H D THE FIRST IDEA
SEE TOOL STONE
TO SEE A TOOL INSIDE A STONE
(…)
THERE IS NO
RELATOINSIHP BETEWEN
P RCIEVED THREAT A D
ACTUAL THREAT
EAT
TREAT
(…)
CAN I DRINK MY OWN THROAT
VG QD CN H DMC 9 C X T ADF M
WH RE DO I END A D Y U BEG N”
(excerpt from Shilpa Gupta, 24:00:01, Motion Flapboard, 2012, 30min loop, 70x10x11 in | 177x25x28 cm)
This experience culminates in the (initially indecipherable) inside out skull by Ariel Schlesinger, an artist who reinvents and transforms objects of everyday life, unfolding, twisting, torching, but, above all, giving them the sense of imminent danger. In this case, uncovering the fragility of the human being – a shattered bone, easily manipulated.
‘Dans un Monde Magnifique et Furieux’, just as its title, is an experience of dualities that offers both passive and soothing contemplation as well as inquietude before a violent world that is paradoxically at the mercy of human frailty. On view until the 27th of July 2016 at Dvir Gallery, in Brussels.
Artists: Ariel Schlesinger, David Maljkovic, Latifa Echakhch, Mircea Cantor, Shilpa Gupta, Yudith Levin.
