Trespassing Threshold
Johannes Bosisio, Hubert Marot, Gabriela Pelczarska, Andrei Pokrovskii, Pei-Hsuan Wang
Review - galerie ZÉRUÌ, London
Trespassing Threshold at ZÉRUÌ gallery, in South London, brings together five international artists to explore notions of tension, surveillance and deus ex machina phenomena.
The immersive scenography, specific to this project, sets the tone: large metal plates obstruct the space, restricting the movement of bodies and gazes. A formal affinity is established between this cold, manufactured surface and the Led sign by Gabriela Pelczarska (Boundaries are where you end and other begin) that welcomes us into the show. Usually used outside to invite us into a shop, the illuminated sign warns us here that someone is watching us: "vigil". The traditional embroidery motifs that adorn this industrial object, despite being the product of a meditative craft technique, produce a strange effect of anachronism, a veritable distortion of time.
Evolving in the space, our silhouettes are reflected in the imposing distorting mirror, sometimes echoing the ghostly figures that inhabit Andrei Pokrovskii's canvases. These are small-scale paintings on wood, in which the artist's favourite symbolic architectures - a theatre stage, a church - exude a disturbingly surreal atmosphere. Shadowy creatures guard the space of the painting, as well as the gallery, from which the light seems to come.
In the metallic alcove at the centre of the room, Ahma, an anthropomorphic figure symbolising the passage from the world of the living to that of the dead, holds up the sky. Pei-Hsuan Wang's ceramic sculpture, inspired by Taiwanese mythology, becomes in this context a contemporary fetish that observes us, theatrical and autonomous.
On either side of the threshold formed by the aluminium wall, the paintings by Johannes Bosisio, one of which is presented in an American metal frame, play on the dichotomy between body and machine, face and mask, blood, water and the iridescent reflections of oil. Inspired by pagan festivals and their rituals, as much as by sprawling cities and their contemporary artefacts, he questions the figure of the cyborg through seductive and ambiguous images that our eyes seek to decipher.
The two photographs taken by Hubert Marot with his telephone at night in the streets of Paris are open enigmas as well, and they too are aimed directly at our vision. The windows of ground-floor flats are covered with matte filters, allowing only light to penetrate. These images, with their postmodern composition, reflect on the boundaries between exterior and interior, private and public, and on the libido vivendi, voyeurism that images provoke. The colour of each photograph in the series invades its frame, which is patiently sanded and polished, before being covered with the paint used in car bodywork. The paradox between the artist's tedious, painterly handiwork and the industrial character of the materials produces a troubling sense of déjà vu.
The immersive scenography, specific to this project, sets the tone: large metal plates obstruct the space, restricting the movement of bodies and gazes. A formal affinity is established between this cold, manufactured surface and the Led sign by Gabriela Pelczarska (Boundaries are where you end and other begin) that welcomes us into the show. Usually used outside to invite us into a shop, the illuminated sign warns us here that someone is watching us: "vigil". The traditional embroidery motifs that adorn this industrial object, despite being the product of a meditative craft technique, produce a strange effect of anachronism, a veritable distortion of time.
Evolving in the space, our silhouettes are reflected in the imposing distorting mirror, sometimes echoing the ghostly figures that inhabit Andrei Pokrovskii's canvases. These are small-scale paintings on wood, in which the artist's favourite symbolic architectures - a theatre stage, a church - exude a disturbingly surreal atmosphere. Shadowy creatures guard the space of the painting, as well as the gallery, from which the light seems to come.
In the metallic alcove at the centre of the room, Ahma, an anthropomorphic figure symbolising the passage from the world of the living to that of the dead, holds up the sky. Pei-Hsuan Wang's ceramic sculpture, inspired by Taiwanese mythology, becomes in this context a contemporary fetish that observes us, theatrical and autonomous.
On either side of the threshold formed by the aluminium wall, the paintings by Johannes Bosisio, one of which is presented in an American metal frame, play on the dichotomy between body and machine, face and mask, blood, water and the iridescent reflections of oil. Inspired by pagan festivals and their rituals, as much as by sprawling cities and their contemporary artefacts, he questions the figure of the cyborg through seductive and ambiguous images that our eyes seek to decipher.
The two photographs taken by Hubert Marot with his telephone at night in the streets of Paris are open enigmas as well, and they too are aimed directly at our vision. The windows of ground-floor flats are covered with matte filters, allowing only light to penetrate. These images, with their postmodern composition, reflect on the boundaries between exterior and interior, private and public, and on the libido vivendi, voyeurism that images provoke. The colour of each photograph in the series invades its frame, which is patiently sanded and polished, before being covered with the paint used in car bodywork. The paradox between the artist's tedious, painterly handiwork and the industrial character of the materials produces a troubling sense of déjà vu.