Galerie Alberta Pane – 14 rue Saint-Claude – 75003 Paris
info@galeriealbertapane.com
MARIE LELOUCHE
Korean landscape
First part opening
14.01.12 | 11.02.12
Opening on Saturday 14th January 2012, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Second part opening
Variation in Building
16.02.12 | 25.02.12
Opening on Thursday 16th February 2012, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Coming back from South Korea, Marie Lelouche sweeps Alberta Pane Gallery with a double
exhibition, inspired from her stay in the Land of the Morning Calm, (Goyang Art Studio 2010
and Nanji art studio 2011). This young French artist, born in 1984 and graduated in 2008
from Ensba (Paris), is specialized in the sophisticated arts of blown glass and porcelain,
which she combined to raw materials, such as fabric or wood, by questioning the material
limits to derive unequaled shapes.
During her travels, Marie Lelouche plunges herself into cultural and social contexts very far
from what she usually knows, in order to actively influence her artistic practice. Real exote –
as Victor Segalen defined it – the artist experiences the different and the “other” to reach a
full freedom in the observation of the object she will describe or just feel. The participating
observance and the experience, as means of creation, are at the heart of her artistic practice.
For the first section of the exhibition, Marie Lelouche has decided to present a brand new
series of objects in various techniques – drawings, sculptures and installations – developing
the many features of the idea of Landscape.
Sans Tire (Still Life Landscape), is made of a wall drawing and a sculpture-installation
inspired by Chuseok, the harvest celebration, one of the most important festivals in Korea.
During this occasion, families carefully set out on a small table a pile of food for their
forefathers. The title of the piece underlines the aesthetic impression of this view that, in fact, could remind a still life painting. On the Gallery walls pastel lines are horizontally drawn, a thin shade that evokes the typical celadon (pale green) in Korean landscapes and ceramics.
Close-up and moved from the wall, a bookshelf hosts some totems in plumped porcelain
shapes towering over wooden circles. The tops of the porcelain elements are painted in three
shades of green: a color evocating both the Korean ceramic glazing and the image of a
rotting fruit.
Sans titre (Landscape) is a set composed of a blown glass sculpture standing on a wooden
support and a series of drawings (graphite on paper). The glass bust, shaped and doubled,
lies on the inclined wooden board: this almost abstract view, echoes the onlooker. As for the
drawings, they remind of the body through dresses, as the artist explained: “only a dress, as
a piece of the social body, could take it back to an intelligible form.”
In the first section of the Korean Landscape exhibition, Marie Lelouche approaches the
body’s themes, the subjects of object and landscape as an architect-anthropologist, dealing
with a profound reflection on rituals, traditions and values of a completely different country: South Korea.
For the second section of the exhibition (Variation in Building), Marie Lelouche presents a set
of pieces – installations and drawings – produced during her stay in Goyang, in 2010. This
city belongs to the megalopolis of Seoul, noticeably developed after its enormous economic
growth, during the last fifty years. The population increase and the exodus towards the
capital, brought a mass construction of several occidental structure covered, while building,
by anti-dust barriers. These, divided in colored slashes, generated a strange frame: nearly
imaginary buildings. This kind of colored decoration could also be seen in traditional Korean
architectures. Marie Lelouche has chosen to use these slashes in her installation Variation in
Building, by giving them a real, plastic value. Hanging from the wall – as curtains hiding
infinite, blind windows – or gently divided in colored piles on a white socle, they fluently and visionary evoke those buildings and the Korean population increase. “These tissue panels
are like cultural persistences. Being part of the construction process, they are invisible in the finalized building.” From the Korean megalopolis, Marie Lelouche keep only a specific object that can, by itself, remind both the country development – expressed by the
proliferation of buildings – and heritage through the South Korean characteristics.
The installation and the drawing (thin felt- tip pen) inspired an ideal urban structure, made upon the unconscious renewal of traditions.
