INDIA ART FAIR (Feb 2-5, 2017) ‘Materic Reveries’ at India Art Fair 2017

The presentation gathers together works by Joël Andrianomearisoa, Ayesha Jatoi, Timothy Hyunsoo Lee and UBIK, all of who recuperate objects from their environment to build narratives and evoke stories, to address the relationship between art and its beholder, or to question love and its processes, in a sheer diversity of mediums, materials and strategies, from denim and painted wood blocks, to c-prints and cut-out paintings. The minimalism and materic nature of the selected works directly contrasts with their organic complexity. By changing the arrangement of the works over the duration of the fair, the presentation deliberates the booth-space and how it plays an important role in the negotiation between the viewer and the familiarity of an artwork in a contemporary art fair context.

Ayesha Jatoi, Untitled, 2007. 6 Lambda Print, wood, plexiglas, 15 x 11 cm and 3 Lambda Print, wood, plexiglas, 30 x 20 cm. All unique. Dimensions of the installation on image: 130x 160 cm / Courtesy of the Artist and Sabrina Amrani

‘Materic Reveries’ begins with Joël Andrianomearisoa’s latest body of works from his 'Complex horizons', 'New Horizons', 'Mascarade' and 'After time desired' series, all of them addressing a new approach to depict portraits and landscapes. In these fake paintings and sculptures, the artists finds the vehicle to express his recurrent themes: memory and emotions.

Joël Andrianomearisoa, CecilChipie1989MacBrax, 2017, Blue denim. 20 x 80 cm / Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani

The presentation continues with a series of photographs by Ayesha Jatoi from 2007 of real locations, but the composition management of these architectural spaces make them pictorial pieces, as a past memory mysteriously solemn and evocative. The images present long shots, low light, corridors, white and dark walls, shadows: the spaces are devoid of any human presence, where light plays the decisive role. With these romantic and melancholic images Jatoi is not interested in the mere reproduction of the everyday but in its elevation to the symbolic. The works are presented in four iterations of a wall installation.

Timothy Hyunsoo Lee will present several works for the first time at India Art Fair 2017. His latest series of works, 'An autobiography of a comet boy', materialize a sonnet that the artist wrote during the process of falling in love, heartbreak, recovery, and redemption. The series consist of seven works that contain two lines, in a visual representation of the sonnet, that are sold separately. The original sonnet, only know to the artist, would only be revealed to the collector who acquires all the works together, completing the visual representation of it. The artist will also showcase 'Blanket and 12 Attempts to a reconciliation', two works from 2016 never shown to the public before.

Timothy Hyunsoo Lee, An autobiography of a comet boy (Lines III & IV), 2017. Textile ink and gold leaf on Arches Aquarelle paper. 76 x56 cm / Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani

Timothy Hyunsoo Lee, An autobiography of a comet boy (Lines IX & X), 2017. Textile ink and gold leaf on Arches Aquarelle paper. 76 x56 cm / Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani

Timothy Hyunsoo Lee, An autobiography of a comet boy (Lines XIII & XIV), 2017. Textile ink, watercolor and gold leaf on Arches Aquarelle paper. 76x56 cm / Courtesy of the Artist and Sabrina Amrani

Timothy Hyunsoo Lee, Blanket, 2016, Mulberry paper. 164x120x22 cm / Courtesy of the Artist and Sabrina Amrani

In the central wall of the booth, UBIK will present his latest work 'Assembly Line', a series that explores the negotiation between an artwork, its display and its intended space. The installation takes form as a rotating set of arrangements using strips of sandpaper applied to the wall, creased papers, digital prints on glossy photographic paper, painted MDF boards, blocks of wood and white cement cast painted with red oxide. Every day of the fair, the visitor can experience the series in different iterations, with each arrangement forming three standalone works per day; while acting as an evolving installation. Through 'Assembly Line' the artist is interested in drawing attention to the relationship between the gaze of a visitor, and the stare of the artwork.

Joël Andrianomearisoa will also present an artwork specifically created for the Project Section of India Art Fair 2017, in a first collaboration of Sabrina Amrani and Thibault Poutrel Contemporary Art for the production of an artwork. For this project, the artist created an artwork that speaks to Madagascar and India’s complex, and multiplicitous landscape of shared experiences, as well as to Joël’s own aesthetic interest in memory and nostalgia. The result is 'When the day belongs to the night', a triptych that is at once a monumental construction undergirded by intricate structures, a painting that experiments with fields of colour, and a tapestry that weaves together melancholia, remembrances, and personal narratives.