Exhibition

March 30 - April 28, 2007
Galerie de la Friche la Belle de Mai - Marseille

Abdelkader Benchamma presents a series of drawings of great finesse in execution. In felt-tip gouache and ink, they are created without any preliminary sketch, conceived as a form of writing. Their format varies, ranging from a sketchbook to the artist’s in situ interventions.

The virtuosity and sobriety of Abdelkader Benchamma’s line illustrate improbable events animated by a wide range of dynamics. The drawings become the privileged setting for situations in which various protagonists, living or inanimate, are subject to tensions, levitations, thwarted movements and silent dialogues. Abdelkader Benchamma invents furniture that passes through walls, unstable architectures, and a nature capable of burying or crushing. His natural spaces are sometimes inhabited by hordes of people. They become the scene of races, gatherings and struggles whose purpose remains uncertain. Furniture, characters and plants populate the same universe, obeying puzzling laws in which Abdelkader Benchamma’s subjects seem to be the victims of unknown forces.

Nature is depicted through a fluid arrangement of recurring motifs, set side by side to recreate the power of mountain landscapes or the lush growth of grasses and plants. The sinuous graphic treatment of the vegetation and the rendering of heaps, sometimes mixing the human and the organic, accentuate the anxiety-inducing quality of certain situations. The accumulation of forms, their supernumerary quantity tending towards infinity, and the impression of saturation they create contribute to the drawing’s ability to project the viewer beyond the sheet of paper.

The artist handles the absurd and measures his visual effects with great precision. The purity and intensity of the line in the scenes presented convey immediate and powerful atmospheres, calling into question and undermining the stability of reality.

Sarah Tritz creates installations and sculptures composed of elements whose assemblage demonstrates an energetic gesture combined with a genuine mastery of volume. Other works on view, including drawings, bas-reliefs and casts, complete the body of work. Through cutting, painting and the combination of raw materials, she builds here a series of pieces of furniture that embrace an aesthetic of the “poorly made” while referencing various formalist currents.

Her furniture is enriched with objects found at flea markets or in bazaars, modelled or cast by the artist; they form the genesis of each piece and determine its theme. Sarah Tritz’s furniture reflects a process of storage, preserves clues to her daily history and assigns a function to elements deemed unfinished. The artist arranges thoughts and structures her perception of reality, evoking in turn music and love, love and separation, culture. Her bookshelves, cabinets with compartments and clothing racks, open to view, constitute fragments of narrative.

Changes in rhythm and materiality are developed throughout the works presented by Sarah Tritz. The multiplication of volumes is set in tension with her drawings and her clay sculptures. The artist creates forms with precarious balance, poised between the functional and the decorative, the abstract and the figurative. Sarah Tritz uses elements, whether isolated or in series, that respond to, illustrate and complete each other, moving from suggestion to statement. Her volumes and drawings convey an ambivalence that combines the subtle traces of a diary with its spectacular staging, ultimately calling for an interpretation that lies outside the artist’s own.