Caroline - Vincent Tavenne

About

Vincent Tavenne’s large-scale sculptures are tents, pavilions, domes, spheres, some constructed according to complex blueprints with elaborate inner workings, built around elaborate scaffolding, others assembled quite succinctly with only a few elements. Mightily dimensioned, literally of architectural proportions, they occupy interior spaces, but they can just as easily meet us in the open air. Their uniqueness comes from the impression of ambivalence that they ingeniously evoke in us. These objects seem both natural and artistic at the same time; their immediate presence radiates something discreet, perhaps reserved; above all, in their architectural monumentality, they are nevertheless very delicate, fragile structures, as obvious as they are mysterious and full of intimacy.

A little wood and fabric are enough to create spectacular dimensions or fantastic forms, to evoke history or exoticism, to describe an interior versus exterior space with a simple linen shell.

In Vincent Tavenne’s first solo exhibition Caroline at the Laura Mars Gallery, the expansive textile installations are the backdrop for a surreal scenery of banal and at the same time strange objects, made of puny material. These develop such an uncanny presence that they almost seem to tap you on the shoulder or look at you.

Vincent Tavenne is concerned with the intensity of immediacy. He conceives his sculptural work as a situation to be experienced experimentally, involving the viewer in a real experience of space and time without theory or prior knowledge. His references range from the cosmic to the everyday. Tavenne’s sculptures and installations make infinity sensually tangible and show the familiar as an unknown terrain.