Les Halles / Les Ailes
13 – 15 January, 2005
Halle Carrosserie, Route de l’Ancien, Sierre 11, Switzerland
Marcelo Brantes, Johan Thom, Happy Dhlame, Patryk Starzykowski, Vukasin Nedeljkovic, Nicola Gray, Pascale Delevaux, Martin Chanda, Senzo Nhlapo, Lawrence Chikwa, Martina Kleinhans, Melanie Noirjean, Gregoire Fontana & Party Kit, Katherine Oggier, Marianne Engel, Lasse Ernlund Lorentzen
‘Les Ailes/Les Halles’ was an exhibition presented by Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais & the Centre de Reflexion sur l’Image et ses Contextes that brought together work by artists from Switzerland, South Africa, Denmark, Zambia, England, Serbia, Poland and Brazil. The exhibition was one of the outcomes of Brazilian artist Marcelo Brantes’ time as artist-in-residence at CRIC/ECAV. Although having lived in New York since 1996, Marcelo represents a tradition in Brazilian art of ‘collaboration’ and ‘inclusivity’ as opposed to the European idea of the lone, romantic artist. He was not the curator of this exhibition, but rather the facilitator – an artist-curator or curator-artist. The artists whose work was represented were invited by Marcelo to contribute work to the exhibition – some were students at ECAV, others were invited to come to Sierre to take part and make their contribution to what was essentially a collaborative venture. It was as much of a creative act as making an art work – ideas connected, imagination took flight and used its wings, inside and outside interacted. Themes and affinities developed; there was no curatorial enforcement.
The world has changed post 9/11, reality has shifted. Without denying the realities of the event, the manipulation and fictionalization of the event changed everything. Reality became confused – notwithstanding the ongoing, very real effects. Lasse Ernlund Lorentzen’s 11 images of the iconic twin towers that no longer exist remind us of this. Artists have always played with the notion of reality, the metaphorical relationships of art. No art from any time period represented ‘reality’. The artists in ‘Les Halles / Les Ailes’ played with reality, changed it. Marcelo Brantes’ transformation of dead cockroaches from New York by exchanging wings with a Swiss butterfly
creates a new reality. Metamorphosis; Gregor Samsa succeeds in getting out of bed. The clouds in Nicola Gray’s black and white photographs are transformed into dramatic images – one step removed from reality, a subtle shift from the ‘real’ to the ‘metaphorical’. Toxic black clouds, or the beautiful sublime? Katherine Oggier’s silent scream is also unnerving, unsettling. The imagination is at work and prompted – as in Marianne Engel’s colour photographs; hidden aspects of everyday life are made manifest. Serbian artist Vukasin Nedeljkovic’s video installation Prince of the Forest is an uncanny bringing together of Disney’s Bambi character and hunting trophy deer heads sold as children’s toys in Belgrade – now covered in fox fur. The apparent innocence of childhood is given a dark twist and there is a hint of confusion that is also apparent in his video Perfect Marriage. Pascale Delevaux’s photographs of shop window toy displays also suggest a distortion and inversion of the idea of play and dreams.
The inside was taken outside, the outside brought inside. Martin Chanda played with the space and physical materiality of the world. Melanie Noirjean invoked the vast spaces of the desert in the space of the gallery – suggesting an openness of mind through an openness of space. Martina Kleinhaus uses the discarded matter of life, imagines secret un-thought-of histories of the things we throw away without thinking. The hidden roots that feed visible nature revealed themselves in Happy Dhlame and Patryk Starzykowski’s sculptural installations.
Artists have never been divorced from social and political realities. Lawrence Chikwa uses the material language of art to question and investigate past and present leadership in Africa. Who is responsible for the multiple realities of the vast continent we blithely call ‘Africa’, and where is it heading? Senzo Nhlapo’s Crossroads (Iziphambano Nemigwaqo) suggests religious and political influences – different roads to travel at different junctions, choices to be made about turning left or right or continuing straight on. The cross also symbolises sociability, places where people meet and interact.
The social gathering of artists connected with the exhibition was echoed by the participation of Gregoire Fontana and Party Kit who hosted a ‘party’ during the exhibition on the evening of Wednesday, January 12th. “Dress code: black. Bring your own Cds”. Sound of a different nature also featured at the Vernissage with a sound work by Christophe Fellay.
