Curator : Sanna Moore
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil’s sculptural works capture water in three stages of flux, a continuous stream, as tool to aid dissolution and in a frozen moment. His site-specific installation in the gardens connects the Foundation by an imaginary tunnel to its antipodal point in the South Pacific Ocean.
Benoît Billotte’s large scale wall drawing maps the topography of wind movement across the world’s oceans and seas. His simplified graphic symbols recall the swirling arrows charting the wind on weather maps.
Gaëlle Callac uses title pages of vintage books as a basis for her work, in ABC de l’Eau (a series of 27 etchings) she tells a story of a man looking back on his past. Each page references water in some way either in words or through images.
Cécile Carrière’s mythical drawings represent the flow of life’s cycles. Rivers flow from source through mountain landscapes or connect a cast of human characters to one another.
Elizaveta Konovalova’s installation Altstadt features pebbles collected along the banks of the river Elbe. The intense terracotta colour of the stones gives a hint to their origins, remnants of the red bricks from coastal homes destroyed by bombing during World War II. Slowly eroded over the years these pebbles are graded in size from palm size to tiny fragments which almost seem to disappear.
Jérémy Laffon makes a bold statement with a vast cube of ice reminiscent of Tony Smith’s steel sculpture Die from the 1960s. Yet Laffon’s work has no permanence. It retains its form for only a matter of days, over the course of the exhibition the ice melts and flows along canals in the floor to collect finally in steel barrels.
Gustavo Millon makes a strong comment on the water crisis that has plagued his native Chile for more than nine years. In a series of photos taken at the same location over the course of several months he captures the sky each day. The colour of the sky reflects the status of the drought. Beautiful blue skies signify dread that no rain will fall again today.
Visual artists since antiquity have captured water in their work, whether the positive or adverse effects, it is fundamental in how we live our lives. As subject matter, it offers artists such an abundance of possibilities to explore. This exhibition presents water as solid, as liquid and as an infinite flow of ideas and interpretations.
