Selected Artworks. Part 2
Tavares Strachan
Jackie, 2022
Oil, enamel, pigment, acrylic, matboard
D - 120.7 cm
In his collaborative and interdisciplinary practice that conjoins art and science, Tavares Strachan leads an investigation into the hierarchical forces responsible for the production of cultural knowledge. Aeronautics, astronomy, deep-sea exploration, and extreme climatology are but some of the thematic arenas out of which Strachan creates monumental allegories that tell of cultural displacement, human aspiration, and mortal limitation.
Laure Prouvost
The Octopus Body - In The Softness Of Your Presence, 2022
Oil on canvas
160 x 230 cm
The world in which Laure Prouvost lives is full of fantasy and fables. She aims to reach her audience through her imitation of those fables. Winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2011 and the Turner Prize in 2013, Prouvost typically combines a diverse range of media including performance, video and sculpture, which are frequently full of poetry and humor.
Octopus is far from being the first time being employed in her artwork. “I had the idea of the octopus as a metaphor for the origins of our planet and, as human beings, for the development of our nervous systems. […] The octopus is the oldest mind or brain of this planet. With her arms, she’s touching and thinking many things at one time. And could it be where we all come from? The only thing the octopus doesn’t have is memory, so she cannot evolve so much. She cannot pass down knowledge. I also often forget things, so I can connect to that.”
Jeff Wall A Woman and her Doctor, 1980-1981Transparency in lightbox100.3 x 155.6 cmEdition of 3 plus 1 artist's proofJeff Wall is a contemporary Canadian photographer whose work is concerned with ideas about the nature of images, representation, and memory. Renowned for his role in shaping photography as a conceptual art form, Jeff Wall was part of a movement that pioneered large-format tableaux images of everything from mundane interactions to elaborately constructed scenes. His large-scale photographs appropriate the visual language of advertising in their use of backlit transparencies and large scale. The subjects are “cinematographic” reconstructions of everyday moments, fiction, and art history, which he refers to as “near documentary”.
JR Ballerina in containers, Hanging in thereLe Havre, France, 2021 103 x 153 x 6.5 cmColour photograph, matte plexiglass, aluminium, wood (shadow box frame)By overlaying gigantic black-and-white photographs on public spaces, JR makes the invisible – people, usually, the poor, the marginalised, the forgotten – visible. However, this time his canvas is formed from containers. Back in July 2014, JR completed the Women are Heroes project at the Port of Le Havre. He pasted on Le Magellan, a 363-meter-long container ship, the eyes of a woman for a trip around the world. Taking advantage of the exceptional and monumental aspect of the site, JR shoot a series of photographs with 4 dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet, and further developed. These containers create a unique atmosphere, and invite us to travel.
Sophie Calle
Room 44. February 17th / March 1st, 1981-1983
100 x 140 cm each
Colour and BW photographs, frames
In the beginning of the 1980s, the conceptual artist thoroughly engaged with the theme of surveillance through her characteristic association of texts and photographs. On February 16, 1981, she was hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. In the course of her cleaning duties, she examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown. On Friday, March 6 the job came to an end.