Re-enchantment

17 Février—11 Mai 2024

Paris Pantin

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Re-enchantment

Bianca Bondi · Shuyi Cao · Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė · Olga Grotova · Angelika Loderer · Manuel Mathieu · Wanda Mihuleac · Teresa Pągowska · Ariana Papademetropoulos

Curated by Oona Doyle

In the aftermath of the First World War, the sociologist Max Weber described a phenomenon of disenchantment as the result of a process of ‘rationalisation’ inherent to modernity, by which reality becomes objectifiable. Re-enchantment brings together ten artists, whose work responds to a reality that is often felt as demystified and damaged by the objectification and exploitation of nature and traumas of the past century to explore ways of re-enchanting the world.

Watch a video of the exhibition with curator Oona Doyle and the artists.

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Watch a video of the exhibition with curator Oona Doyle and the artists.

It’s interesting to see how, in the 21st century, artists are more and more conscious of the consequences of the past century, and notably hyper-rationalisation and the growing ecological crisis, and are trying to change their approach to painting and to making through collaboration: by collaborating with nature, with the non-human and by localising the history and symbolism of each material. — Oona Doyle, curator

Artist duo Dorota Gawęda (b. 1986, Lublin, Poland – lives in Basel) & Eglė Kulbokaitė (b. 1987, Kaunas, Lithuania – lives in Basel) weaves together ecology and technology, science and magic, nonhuman intelligence and sensorial experience. The exhibition presents a mirage-like installation that features chimerical flowers.

The installation consists of digital prints of algorithmically-manipulated imagery on chiffon displayed in an aluminium enclosure. The semi-transparency of the imagery when seen from up front gives a sense of porosity. Then, when the viewer looks from a different angle, the images reveal themselves. Through works that are activated by movement and by the viewer’s active engagement and interaction with them, the artists seek to break down perceived boundaries between humanity and the world around us.

Enchantment means falling under the spell of magical influences, while re-enchantment implies an act of repairing through wonder. Some of the artists in the exhibition invert the hierarchy between landscape and figure, and others merge human figures with the animal, mineral and plant realms, countering an anthropocentric view and blurring the boundaries between human and non-human. Other artists collaborate with living matter rather than instrumentalising it, giving free rein to the transformative power of materials, which evolve over the course of the exhibition. By moving away from a linear perspective and favouring multidimensional viewpoints, the artists strive to reinvent our relationship with the reality that surrounds us.

In works by Teresa Pągowska (1926–2007, Warsaw, Poland), dream space is layered onto reality, softening the boundaries between the two dimensions. Known for her inventive and felt treatment of the female figure, she draws on women’s experience of their surroundings, as well as her own dreams, which she materialises onto the canvas. Oona Doyle, the curator of the exhibition, sets forth: ‘In a society that prioritises men’s point of view, women’s experiences are often relegated to the background. In the face of this patriarchal system, imagination offers the possibility of liberating oneself from an imposed reality.’

Teresa Pągowska
Ślady - wersja druga (Traces - second version), 2005
Acrylic, tempera on canvas
129.5 x 139.5 cm (50.98 x 54.92 in)

This dreamlike, sensory pictorial experience is echoed in the phantasmagorical paintings of Ariana Papademetropoulos (b. 1990, Los Angeles, USA – lives in LA), for whom ‘painting is a portal to another world’. In her canvases, human figures meet with natural forms, and the elements burst into domestic spaces, expressing a strong desire to connect with nature.

Ariana Papademetropoulos
The Organ of Magical action, 2024
Oil on canvas
233 x 274 x 4 cm (100 x 80.91 x 1.57 in)

It appears that there are different planes of existence, and while the first can be disenchanting, going deeper allows for re enchantment, synchronicity, and the supernatural to occur. While science seems to demystify the modern world, I find that the more I learn, the more sacred everything becomes. — Ariana Papademetropoulos

Ariana Papademetropoulos

Invitation, 2024

Oil on canvas

232.5 x 200 x 4 cm (91.54 x 78.74 x 1.57 in)

Entering the Oxford dictionary in 2000, the word ‘re-enchantment’ can be understood in the magical sense, but also in a political and ecological sense. For philosopher Silvia Federici, re-enchanting the world implies ‘reconstructing our lives around and with others including animals, waters, plants’.

The softening of boundaries between the human and the non-human is expressed not only through representation, but also through the very processes of making. Angelika Loderer (b. 1984, Feldbach, Austria – lives in Vienna) presents a series of ‘living photographs’ that are made in collaboration with aerial mycelium, micro-organisms which she collects from mushrooms in the forest and adds to photographs contained in glass frames-turned-terrariums.

Throughout the exhibition, the mycelium grows, gradually beginning to consume the photographs and thus altering them with abstract forms and patterns. The images are engaged in a process of metamorphosis, which the artist halts upon opening the frame. As Loderer explains, the works draw attention to ‘the fragile ecosystem and how everything is interrelated and interconnected to each other.’

Another artist whose works transform over the course of the exhibition is Bianca Bondi (b. 1986, Johannesburg, South Africa – lives in Paris). In Bondi’s dream-scape installation, mobiles are suspended above metal bowls filled with colourful, crystallising liquids and nestled within sand dunes, evoking the ancient divination ritual of scrying. The mobiles are composed of an array of objects she found in the Arabian desert, ranging from Roman and Greek empire glass shards, evergreen-preserved flowers and a miniature divining rod. Repurposing these objects, Bondi reweaves their lost histories.

The installation is engaged in an process of transformation. Through a process of chemical reactions, the liquid gradually turns from turquoise to red, before eventually, with the passage of weeks and months, evaporating. These subtle but steady changes are, for the artist, ‘a way to show that we're not alone. There's very much energies that are present that are much more subtle,’ she explains, ‘and they take time, but they do change.’

I am inspired by the multitude of inner worlds and the sacred geometry we find when we look at plants or crystals under microscopes. If you are constantly in awe of nature, you feel the need to protect it. This got me remembering how we tend to protect what is visible unfortunately. So how does one honour the invisible energies and underline the interconnectivity of all things physical and non? — Bianca Bondi

In her sculptures, Shuyi Cao (b. 1990, Guangzhou, China – lives in New York) assembles myriads of materials, from seashells to bioplastics, glass and fake nails, which metamorphosize into imaginary beings. Cao collected the materials from various locations, such as coastlines and landfills, notably from the Brooklyn Dead Horse Bay – a site historically designated as a dumping ground for animal carcasses and urban waste.

These transformative creatures weave fragments of our material world into fables that become portals opening to otherworldly terrains. Myth-making, as a universal mechanism for connecting to the land and navigating environmental uncertainties, inspires this process of re-mythologizing and re-storying. It becomes a method to find a sense of belonging in foreign places I migrate to, and conjuring a sense of wonder in a demystified and damaged landscape. — Shuyi Cao

Shuyi Cao
Every name carries a deity (stone bloomer), 2023
rocks, minerals, driftwood, oyster and clam shells, seashell fragments, horseshoe crab, ceramic, glass, barnacles, weathered rubber, recycled plasetic, resin, metal, acrylic paint
50 x 56 x 81 cm (19.69 x 22.05 x 31.89 in)

In other works, Cao hand-blows coloured borosilicate glass into forms that resemble aerial root networks and play on the transition from opacity to transparency. Cao’s sculptures exude ‘a mixed sense of familiarity and estrangement, perhaps recognized from past incarnations of our very biological and mineral origin, while simultaneously encoding the clues of future evolution’.

Olga Grotova (b. 1986, Chelyabinsk, Russia – lives in London and Paris) makes all of her own paints, using pigments made from stones or from plants. She also collects soil, which she incorporates into her works, alongside the imprints of plants from the communal gardens of her grandmother and great-grandmother, who were condemned to forced agricultural labour during the Soviet era, alongside millions of other women. By experimenting with materials, and in light of transgenerational research, the artist uncovers the history of these invisibilised women.

Olga Grotova
Slovo, 2024
Photograms, haematite, pigments, on linen
230 x 180 x 4 cm (90.55 x 70.87 x 1.57 in)

The way I understand re-enchantment is in reconnecting to the world by means that maybe have been forgotten or something that is not taught in the history class. It's really reconnecting to your history, to the land, to your place in this system of coordinates that you're born to through your senses, through your body. — Olga Grotova

Olga Grotova

Arches and Vessels, 2021

Hematite, malachite, pigments on linen

150 x 110 x 4 cm (59.06 x 43.31 x 1.57 in)

The surfacing of collective trauma also takes place in the works of Manuel Mathieu (b. 1986, Port-au-Prince, Haiti – lives in Montreal), who manipulates the texture and transparencies his canvases until an image pierces through.

Mathieu’s landscapes reveal tears and wounds that allude to the horrors of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti (1957–1986), while also communicating a vitality that pulsates on the surface of the canvas, suggesting the possibility of renewal. Several time-spaces coexist on the same canvas, revealing the extent to which history is lodged in matter.

Manuel Mathieu
L’éveil, 2020–2022
Acrylic, ink, dust, charcoal, chalk, tape, oil sticks
91.4 x 76.2 x 5 cm (35.98 x 30 x 1.97 in)

At once vaporous and solid, the amorphous rivers of pigment in Mathieu’s works meld to construct pictorial spaces that can be read as landscape, water, sky, or even bodies, among many possible interpretations. As the artist says: ‘I think art is a beautiful way or an effective way for us to spend time with the unknown.’

Wanda Mihuleac (b. 1946, Bucharest, Romania – lives in Paris) reminds us that ‘in the word re-enchantment we hear CHANT, to sing’. In her tautological poems, the artist writes words with the substance they are made of, disrupting the distinction between language and materiality. Poetry, but also storytelling and mythology, offer a different way of relating to the world and to accessing knowledge through metaphor and symbol.

Wanda Mihuleac
Feu, 1976-78
C-Print on Baryta Satin Paper /white lacquered maple frame
Image 29.3 x 40.8 cm (11.54 x 16.06 in)

Wanda Mihuleac

Ombre, 1976–1978

Photography

29.3 x 39.2 cm (11.54 x 15.43 in)

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The curatorial format allows a sensory journey through Wanda Mihuleac’s poems. In her photographs, she sculpts shadows, slit, water, earth, fire and reflection – words that resonate with the other works on view, linking the artists together. Works by Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, Olga Grotova and Bianca Bondi interact with the natural light, attempting to capture a process of enchantment.

By moving away from a linear perspective and favouring multidimensional viewpoints, the artists in the exhibition are united by a common approach: to reinvent our relationship with the reality that surrounds us. As some invert the hierarchy between landscape and figure, others merge human figures with the animal, mineral and plant realms, and others still give free rein to the transformative power of materials which evolve over the course of the exhibition. Bringing together this imagery and these processes, the exhibition counters an anthropocentric view and strives to blur the boundaries between human and non-human.

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