Exhibition

Léa Porré: DEAR ONE

19 Nov 2020 – 30 Dec 2020

Regular hours

Monday
00:00 – 23:30
Tuesday
00:00 – 23:30
Wednesday
00:00 – 23:30
Thursday
00:00 – 23:30
Friday
00:00 – 23:30
Saturday
00:00 – 23:30
Sunday
00:00 – 23:30

Timezone: Europe/Rome

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Hosted by: Virginia Bianchi Gallery

Virginia Bianchi Gallery is excited to share the second show on the Gallery’s platform: Dear One, by the French-born, London-based artist Léa Porré. The show is based on the concept of the Sacrificial King, a figure the artist employs to mythically re-interpret Louis XVI’s execution in 1793.

About

Visit at: http://virginiabianchi.com/002-lea-porre/​

Virginia Bianchi Gallery is honoured to share the second show on the platform of the Gallery: Dear One, by the French-born, London-based artist Léa Porré. The show is based on the concept of the Sacrificial King, a figure the artist employs to mythically re-interpret Louis XVI’s execution in 1793.

In her artistic practice, Léa Porré delves into the realm of digital art as a way to reimagine and redefine the history of France. Her production involves a critical re-reading of the History of her native country through the lens of mythology, deeply rooted in her cyclical vision of time. Subverting conventional narratives that define historically iconic events and personalities, Porré composes alternative realities through a mystical, almost spiritual approach that causes a disruption of events as widely accepted. While distancing her practice from traditional historical research, she employs a transhistorical approach to connect events of the past and possible futures to world-wide mythological structures, creating a fluid, cyclical relation between what has been and what will be.

In Dear One, a phrase Porré noticed to be constantly appearing in her mind during the researches for the show, the artist chose to address one particular figure of French History: King Louis XVI. Born in 1754, King Louis XVI has been the last monarch to rule France before the Revolution of 1789. His lethargic temperament and lack of self-confidence, together with some unfortunate decisions in matters of national and international politics, contributed to an increase in people’s resentment towards despotic monarchy. When the French Revolution broke out in 1789 after many episodes of famine across the country, Louis XVI fled to the palace of Versailles and, some years later, was publicly guillotined on charges of counterrevolution. 

In Porré’s solo show, the death of King Louis XVI is taken as a starting point for the development of the exhibition structure: the artist utilizes elements from mythical tales and religious history to re-interpret and re-read the King’s death, with the goal to inscribe French Monarchy into the landscape of mythological narratives.

Dear One builds on one of the arguments of political Royalism, which considers King Louis XVI as a martyr sacrificed for the creation of a new France. Porré explores this royalism, stripped from its political implications, as the sheer desire of the return of the King, placing her fictional royal comebacks in a cyclical perspective from which all events are bound to recur. She also underlines how historical elements are often interpreted through an oversimplified perspective, examining the core powers at work in the construction of History. She urges the audience to remember the subjective frame of History, and, at the same time, to embrace narratives who do not limit themselves to be either reality or fiction, enjoying this floating state of in-betweenness.

The exhibition develops in 3 Acts, reflecting the three stages of Porré’s fictional Sacrifice: the First Act illustrates the Event of the regicide itself. As often happens in Porré’s works, she chooses not to explicitly reveal the sacrifice. On the contrary, she inserts a number of elements that, together with the hidden connections to historical documents, assist the viewer in a gradual decipherment of the scene. On a mysterious altar, absorbed by a bloody, apocalyptic atmosphere, the cathartic sacrifice of the King is carried out.

The second Act of the show is dedicated to the Feast, or the celebrations for the Sacrifice of the King. The event evokes ancient societies’ feasts where facsimiles of the King’s organs, and Royal effigies made of dough, were prepared for all the people to eat during a celebratory banquet. It is a time to celebrate the momentary chaos that announces the return of societal order. In the in-between reality of the scene, the landscape is dominated by a magnificent banquet, whose lavishness, however, cannot conceal the feeling of uneasiness and dissolution evoked by the complete absence of people and the disquieting food on the tables: baked goods in the shape of organs of the Sacrificial King.

The third and last Act of the show consists of an early-morning dispersion of the fragmented body of the King. Once again reminiscent of ancient myths where the body of divine figures was dispersed across fields, the royal body is scattered across the lands and fertilises the crops, literally becoming nourishment of his people, satisfying their hunger as he failed to do during his living.

Entirely realised digitally with CGI renderings, Porré’s Dear One is inscribed into her ongoing interests in the recreation of hyperreal landscapes that blur the boundaries between what is real and what is fake. At the same time, her virtual representations and her recent exploration of GIFs and moving images allowed her to institute a clear connection with the realm of early video games, or those spaces where, she explains, “fictionalised history was first experienced by a whole generation”. It is in that same way that Dear One presents the Sacrifice of the King: its tale connects events across centuries, presenting new perspectives on widely accepted historical events. Dear One urges us to be aware of both our past and the history of other civilisations, in an attempt to perceive that cyclical pattern connecting the past to the future, in an infinite wheel of time.

What to expect? Toggle

CuratorsToggle

Virginia Bianchi

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Léa Porré

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