IANUA
Group exhibition Ianua, Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris, 2022.
Group exhibition with Nina Bernagozzi, Clément Borderie, Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Seulgi Lee, Cat Loray, Simon Martin, Eva Nielsen and Elené Shatberashvili
Ianua means “door” or “entrance” in Latin, and it is from this root that the god Janus takes his name. A deity of transition and transformation, this two-headed figure—one face turned towards the past, the other towards the future—perceives at once what comes before and after, inside and outside, the whole, without moving.
Through an exploration of the constellation of drawing in its expanded form, the exhibition Ianua sets out to examine this apparent immobility, this suspension between two moments in time. It is within this interval that drawing fully comes to life through metamorphosis: a life capable of simultaneously inhabiting and accommodating multiple forms.*
* Emanuele Coccia, Metamorphoses, 2020, Bibliothèque Rivages, Paris.
exhibition view Ianua, galerie Jousse Entreprise, 2022
HÉMOLYMPH
לך לך
“The nymph is a being whose the form coincides punctually with the matter and whose the origin cannot be distinguished from its becoming, is none other than what we call time. “
Agamben - Nymphs.
HÉMOLYMPH
לך לך
“The nymph is a being whose the form coincides punctually with the matter and whose the origin cannot be distinguished from its becoming, is none other than what we call time. “
Agamben - Nymphs.
Suspended in the starry night, assuming a spectral form, in an incredible equilibrist exercice, in suspension,
Ianua, pupil of Janus is a Nymph. A door that has made the happy gesture of escaping to the law of keys
as well as the one of thresholds, in order to remain only, here, now, like a creature made of pure exteriority,
which no longer has the function of being-passage between two places, but which is the place itself, the thing in itself.
This breach, this tiny blade of air that rushes where it wants. This almost nothing, which is none other than almost
everything we have left.
Ianua remembers the fires of the past, Ianua knows well that the house is burning, that the city is in the grip of the flames,
which rise higher each day, but Ianua remains there, suspended. She lingers, absorbed in her cocoon ,
because you have to stop for a moment to heal, to think, to metamorphose.
If we had the audacity to incise this chrysalis with a sharp blade, we would discover the bravery of this nymph being.
We would take the measure of what true metamorphosis is. Of this life capable of hosting two, the one of the Imago,
of the butterfly and the one of the caterpillar; which by leaving her larval stage, stripping itself of her last skin,
operates the radical transformation, here, enclosed in the chrysalis. There, most of her larval organs dissolve completely,
the fats are requisitioned, melt and liquefy.
The interior of Ianua the nymph seeing herself then, being filled with an apparently structureless porridge,
feeling combustions, contortions, contractions. Ianua the nymph is a creature composed under her envelope of
flow of desire which is called hemolymph.
Ninfe / ink and gofun on Hanji paper / 24 x 27 cm / 2022
Chrysalide - chrisalis
ink on Hanji paper / 37,5 x 24 cm / 2022
לך לך בשלכת שלך
ink on Hanji paper / 37,5 x 24 cm / 2022
Hémolymphe - hemolymph
לך לך
ink on Hanji paper / 24,5cm x 43cm / 2022
Exhibition view Ianua, Galerie Jousse entreprise, 2022 (left, Clément Borderie) right, Hémolymphe - hemolymph, ink on Hanji paper / 24,5cm x 43cm / 2022
Hémolymphe - hemolymph
לך לך
ink on Hanji paper / 24,5cm x 43cm / 2022
detail - Nymphe - nymph / ink and gofun on Hanji paper / 26 x 32 cm / 2022
from chrysalide series - Bourgeon d’un cri - bud of a cry / ink on Hnaji paper / 24cm x 20,5cm / 2022
“Marvelous allegories of ambivalence,
of being in the process of becoming,
of life in gestation,
of germination and of expectation…
A whole quivering and watery world,
troubled and hesitant,
that of the interstices,
of the inter- two, fragility...
Both tangible and intangible,
material and intangible,
real and imaginary,
suspended, between life and death,
darkness and light,
solid and liquid,
trembling and numbness ,
petrification and tingling,
these nymphs
– beings, substances or flows in perpetual metamorphosis –
plunge us into the disturbing beauty of indetermination.”
Stéphanie Dulout - journalist, critic
IANUA
Ianua is the door, access in Latin, it is from this root
that the god Janus finds his name. Transition idol,
of transformation. It is a being, a two-headed threshold
– one looking to the past, the other to the future –
perceiving both the before and the after, the interior and the exterior, the whole,
without moving.
It is through this immobility, this suspension between two times,
this slit of the moment, that I consider drawing as a state of the middle,
metamorphosis, between the larval stage and the imaginal stage,
by Imago.
Ianua is a nymph, assuming her spectral form,
suspended in its starry night.
Crossing two lives, unable to be reduced to either one or the other,
in the same way that we cannot
relieve us of the past or the future to exist in the present.
It is a life capable of inhabiting and hosting
several forms simultaneously and which makes this amphibious character its power. *
She is a being whose the form punctually coincides with the matter
and whose the origin cannot be distinguished from its future,
is none other than what we call time.” *
* Coccia - Metamorphoses.
* Agamben - Nymphs.
Ianua /India ink on Hnaji paper and metal / Variable dimensions / 2022
Ianua א / ink on paper / 175 x 100 cm / 2021
Ianua ב / ink on paper / 175 x 100 cm / 2021
SIÈCLE FAUVE, MON BERGER - Fauve century, my shepherd
tribute to the poem Vek, by Ossip Mandelstam
How the poet-shepherd dreams.
How the poet-shepherd dreams.
Siècle fauve, mon berger - fauve century, my shepherd (tribute to the poem Vek, by Ossip Mandelstam) / inks on paper / 162 x 100 cm et 170 x 100 cm / 2020