BODY (E)MOTIONS
A visual and sound experience by Maria Estabanell, Iris Garagnoux and Xuan Liu
Curated by Claire di Felice and Alexis Sarfati
17th- 18th January 2020
Show Opening Night: 16th January at 5 pm
On Thursday 16th of January, do not miss out the opening of BODY (E)MOTIONS, an exciting exhibition proposing an ode to the human anatomy, featuring the works of artists Maria Estabanell, Iris Garagnoux and Xuan Liu, curated by Sotheby’s Institute, London, very own Claire di Felice and Alexis Sarfati.
The show opening at Cookhouse gallery of Chelsea College of Arts offers a visual and sonic experience focusing on essentialist considerations of the human body. Looking at the latter in fraction, each artist will explore a different metonymy to celebrate the body as a whole: an invitation to reconnect with ourselves and others. Leveraging site specific installations, they will investigate the possibilities of the human frame, its movements and plasticity throughout different media.
Blurring the line between painting and sculptures, Iris Garagnoux’s site specific installations will offer a haptic sculptural experience at the cellular level. Holding a microscope to the dermis, the human skin’s most internal layer, the artist will consider the materiality of the human tissue.
Engagement will turn into participation as Xuan Liu’s sound installations invite audience interaction to hear the body in movement. From human to social tissue, Xuan Liu’s instruments also operate as relational devices, welcoming spectators to make sounds together, rejoicing in disharmony.
Creating a dialogue between outer and inner bodies, the show will offer an experiential jump from micro to macro, establishing a passageway from the cellular level to the outer figure with the works of Maria Estabanell. From the most internal layer to the most external one, the exploration of the body in movement will finish with her seminal choreographed portraits video piece. Performed and co-directed by Spanish dancer and video editor, Adrien Blu.
Biographical notes:
French graduate from the Institut Supérieur des Arts de Toulouse (ISDAT), Iris Garagnoux seeks to capture a physical energy and to materialise it into forms, colours and situations. Using paint on canvas as a starting point, she transcribes the result into sculptural or performative fragments, creating a repertoire of gestures. Inscribing herself in the practice of new sculpture, Garagnoux explores the materiality of heterogeneous elements such as latex, wax or hair. Her oeuvre furthers the anti-form explorations of artists such as Robert Morris.
After studying at Nanchang University in her native China, Xuan Liu moved to London to continue her practice on sound installations. Delving into the canon of participative art, the artist focuses on the interactions and possibilities between sound and audiences in various spaces and situations. The viewer plays an active role, often invited to participate into exchanges of energy. Liu introduces a variety of sounds into art galleries changing audiences’ experience of space and sound.
Spanish artist Maria Estabanell completed a BA in Film in Barcelona before starting her MA in Fine Arts at the Chelsea College of Arts in London in 2019. She got her first camera at fourteen and what started as a hobby, slowly and very naturally, became her way of living.
Fascinated and inspired by the human body shape and physical expression, she first started working around the body using photography, before switching to focus on the moving image. Estabanell’s work focuses on the naked body as an object in motion, sculpting it through video.
BODY (E)MOTIONS’ opening night will take place at Chelsea College of Arts in the cookhouse gallery from 5 to 8 pm. Do not miss out on this night of art vanguard, mixed media installations and performance!
The show will be open until the 18th of February.
Alexis Sarfati & Claire Di Felice
MADE IN BED Contributors