Mold Gardens (on the ornemental membrane) - off-site
Solo show by Maya Beaudry
Exhibition off-site, at the Maison de Ventes Leclere, in partnership with Triangle France
Curated by: Charlotte Cosson & Emmanuelle Luciani
November 30, 2017 – February 15, 2018, public opening on November 29, 2017, 6:30PM - 9:30PM
Maison de Ventes Leclere, 5 rue Vincent Courdouan, 13006 Marseille
For her solo exhibition at LECLERE, Canadian artist Maya Beaudry reinvests the interior of PARADISE – a cube adorned with mirrors that has hosted exhibitions curated by Emmanuelle Luciani & Charlotte Cosson since 2014. Her choice of this space is not incidental, as she is interested in architecture, huts, and spaces that generally accommodate human life.
Maya Beaudry primarily creates environments. Far from the coldness of the white cube, she upholsters spaces with soft materials in predominantly pastel colors. In her videos, the fabrics almost come to life, animated by her body, which often intertwines with them. The human being – whether implicitly represented or explicitly present – is central to Beaudry’s installations. For PARADISE, she creates a real cocoon where one can lie down, snuggle, dream, and think…
Is this an invitation to relax that the artist proposes? The answer is more complex than it may seem. Beaudry’s new work isolates the viewers from the outside world, much like the hut she built in the woods, which seems to be a retreat or a suspension of time detached from the flow of everyday life. Reflecting her questions about the possibility of living autonomously, she develops the idea of a necessary step back in the age of survivalism and ancestral fears of invasion or apocalypse.
In the manner of the oblique function theorized by Claude Parent and Paul Virilio, we could speculate that a radical change in lifestyle and habitat would transform ways of thinking. What if customs that involve living in cozy cushions, surrounded by cartoon-like colors, could truly foster empathy and mutual assistance? Theories suggesting that large housing complexes have contributed to the rise of hatred, conflicts, and social disparities would only support this idea.
The connection to minor arts originates in the United States in the history of women’s liberation and the Patterns & Decoration movement, which persisted through the soft sculptures of Mike Kelley. The alternative, kitsch, and the small decondition the mass from a uniform conditioning. How, then, to understand the artist’s recourse to intimacy and decorative art if the issues she addresses are so general? She, who rhythms her work with a runner figure reminding of her mother’s tragic history, and punctuates her works with rugs, sofas, and duvets: what are her points of connection with humanity in its entirety?
Maya Beaudry has understood one precious thing: the necessity of the smallest to touch the largest. She dives into decorative art, without any value judgment related to the tyranny of fine arts: she praises an art that serves humanity, on its scale. Her work thus reminds us that micro and macro are always connected, like similar logics that underpin both cosmic black holes and the atoms that make up matter. Nature, history, and humans are ultimately economical: they are driven by a limited number of logics, which endlessly repeat and form a common foundation that is often forgotten.
Charlotte Cosson & Emmanuelle Luciani
