Landscape with large river, part 1
Jagna Ciuchta
Florence Loewy by artists, Gallery/Bookshop in Paris
Opening, June, 14, 2014
From 5 to 9 pm
Exhibition from 14 to 25 June 2014
Landscape with large river is a small scale oil painting on canvas by Eugène Carrière, undated and made between 1849 and 1906.
An almost monochrome landscape of contrasting light and darks, with a perspective obscured by fog.
Landscape with large river, part 1
Realism has disappeared here, only the composition lines of this landscape intersected by a sinuous movement remain and unfold into a series of varying paintings.
In her work, Jagna Ciuchta indifferently makes use of different supports, forms, references and materials, freeing herself from the outset from criteria of appreciation linked to style, longevity of form and uniqueness of work. Drawing from the resources of art history and from her own work, Jagna Ciuchta explores re-presentation. Photographs of her past exhibitions as well as photocopies of these photographs feature as supports for the creation of new works.
The layers accumulate.
The different interpretations reveal themselves transparently under a thoughtful gaze yet hide themselves from the eyes of those attached to the palpable reality of the work before them.
Jagna Ciuchta’s work portrays the absence of the artwork but strangely, her modus operandi draws her inevitably to its covering up, its disappearance and destruction.
A cardboard box filled with counter-forms in black varnish contains splintered memories of past events.
These fallen pieces of wood originate from the pedestals from the exhibition When you see me again, it won’t be me which were dismantled and cut out to form a sculpture co-signed by Jagna Ciuchta and the artist Laurent Le Deunff.
Has the work reached, in its current form, its ultimate destination?
Each of Jagna Ciuchta’s exhibitions is an in situ creation which explores the installation of her works in a real environment. For this exhibition the artist takes references from the place’s identify and recreates at the centre of the gallery a hybrid sculpture, inspired by the shelves designed by architects Jacob+MacFarlane, both works themselves as well as support for her works. By reinterpreting the existing forms from the nearby area she exposes the work to the risk, absurd, of being confused with that to which it refers. Yet Jagna Ciuchta’s work occupies a completely different dimension. The artist draws links between past and present, history and her story and interweaves supports and mediums, undermining all separation of aesthetical, temporal and spatial categories.
The current exhibition will also evolve into a second phase: another variation, a new relief.
Landscape with large river, part 2
From 5 to 26 July 2014
Opening, July, 5th 2014
–
A set of paintings presented in the exhibition is taken from the deluxe edition of the book When you see me again, it won’t be me, published by Editions Dilecta, which will be launched on this occasion.