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until 24.01. | #0996ARTatBerlin | Daniel Marzona shows from 14th January 2017 the exhibition format “Wall Works – 8 Weeks, 4 Exhibitions”, starting with the artist Cécile Dupaquier.
The art of Cécile Dupaquier is a question of the material. It is about sparseness, simplicity, and the beauty of Styrofoam sheets, acoustic insulation boards, and variations of plywood from ordinary do-it-yourself stores. The drawings, in turn, are done on paper with a standard A4 format, which can be bought around the corner in low-priced packages if one urgently needs to print a computer file. The artistic gesture thereby is always minimal (a cut, a fold, a facing, or the mounting of a hinge) and serves to plumb the formal possibilities – and physical limits – of the material in space. The artist’s works play with surfaces, but also try out the possibilities for creating volumes (this also recalls the formal research of the avant-gardes of the early 20th century, Gerrit Rietveld and Katarzyna Kobro, and recent artist figures like Charlotte Posenenske, Joachim Bandau, and Thea Djordjadze).
At her exhibition with Daniel Marzona, Cécile Dupaquier is showing new works that she calls “Tableaus”, developed in a long process of fabrication. For them, she forms fine wooden boards the way a violinmaker builds an instrument, and, without any preliminary drawing, gentle curves and waves gradually emerge in the material, creating in the end a subtle motion. As soon as the object is built, it receives several coats of matte white paint. The volume exists actually only by means of the shadows it casts, and the precision of its production makes it an object of contemplation. As viewer, one sees pure surfaces that constantly change with the change in light in the course of the day and that continually reveal themselves anew. Even if the process is complicated, the proportions of the works – in the formats 210×146, 60×46, or 46×30 centimeters – play with the simplicity and absolute rigor of an A4 sheet of paper.
Canvases without canvas, sculpture to be hung – the status of these “Tableaus” is peculiar. The relationship between the gallery’s white wall and what hangs on it, actually a kind of wall sculpture, has seldom been taken this far. (In a prior exhibition, with a gesture reminiscent of Claude Rutault, Cécile Dupaquier even painted the wall with the same white paint she uses for her works!) One could speak here of Minimalism, although the point is rather simplicity and humility – terms that hardly exist anymore in our world of the roaring spectacle and that are needed precisely for that reason.
Text: Thibaut de Ruyter
Cécile Dupaquier was born in France in 1970 and lives in Berlin since 2004. From 1988 to 1993 she studied arts and media design at the École Nationale des Beaux Arts (ENBA) in Lyon. Among others she had solo exhibitions at the Galerie weisser Elefant, Berlin (2015), the Atelier Wilhelmstraße 16, Stuttgart (2015), the Galerie de L’École Supérieure d’Arts, Brest (2008) and at the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2001). Her works were seen in following group exhibitions: pilote : pilote, SEZ, Berlin (2016), True mirror, Espace Commines, Paris (2016), Sans Titre ( )#2, Galerie unspaced, Paris (2015) and Raumbestandserhebung (project space festival), Kleine Humboldt Galerie, Berlin (2014).
Vernissage: Friday, 13th January 2017, 6 to 9 p.m.
Exhibition period: Saturday, 14th January to Tuesday, 24th January 2017
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Image caption: Cécile Dupaquier: Tableau n°3, 2016 (detail) courtesy of the artist and Daniel Marzona, Berlin
Exhibition Cécile Dupaquier – Daniel Marzona – Kunst in Berlin ART at Berlin
