Philomène Hoël: Keep it Longer

About

Opening event: 21 April 2017, 6-10 pm

22-30 April 2017

Curated by Valentina Bin and Simina Neagu

Philomène Hoël’s Keep It Longer is a site-specific project which will occupy Gallery S O’s two spaces for two weeks with two shows. This will include two screens, two curators and two texts.

One title: Keep It Longer.

The artist will work across the gallery’s project space, which will host an immersive installation, and select a contemporary jewellery and object display in the front space.

A special opening event will take place on the 21st April, 6-10 pm.

Philomène Hoël works with film and performance to activate the cinematic dimension of a space and set up intimate scenarios of crisis. Her practice is concerned with the power dynamics, concealed identities, tensions and constant shifts of control that exist within social relationships. Hoël interviews strangers in a dark set built in their own living room, inscribes fictional subtitles on old silent family videos, and pushes actors to perform where fiction and spontaneous contingencies merge.

Interested in subjective experiences, the artist intentionally complicates the interplay between sound, image, performance and their reception. Sometimes absurd and uncanny, the works draw on her memories of partners, friends, family members, strangers and the desire of dissolving one’s individuality into the flux of life’s encounters.

Hoël refers to the psychological notion of ‘Acting Out’ as the drive behind her work: the opening up of uneasy situations, the stimulus of suppressed desires and anxieties, a point of no return.

Philomène Hoël (b.1985/France) is an artist living and working between London and Switzerland and, together with the artist Richard Hards, co-runs the exhibition programme flat deux. Hoël graduated in 2015 from the Royal College of Art and is a practice-based PhD Candidate at the University of Reading in partnership with LUX, with a proposal titled “Is it your hand or is it my hand?” based on the artist and filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin (1939 – 2012).

Recent shows include: “I wanna live in a world that I am used to”, Horse Hospital, London (2016); “the entertainer” at “It’s not the digging, it’s the dirt”, invited by DIRT collective, Art Licks Weekend, London (2016); “You lonely white sugar on a sunny balcony”, flat deux, Balfron Tower, London (2016); “Mister Blue”, for “Hats off”, Ashley Gallery, Berlin (2016); “Knot Knot” series of 2 shows at flat deux, Balfron Tower, London (2016); “Control and Ventriloquism: What You Say Goes”, The Function Room, London (curated by Anna Clifford and Dunya Kalantary, 2015); “Don’t be dead” at the Museum Kunst(Zeug)Haus, Rapperswill, CH (2014, solo); “Is there an opening here?”, Espace Echallens 13, Lausanne, CH (2013); “The moment you know, you know, you know”, Espace Schwarzwaldallee, Basel, CH (2013); “Les Gabarits imaginaires”, Espace Dem’Art, Lausanne, CH.

Valentina Bin (b.1989/Italy) and Simina Neagu (b.1988/Romania) explore the notion of the exhibition as an event, working primarily with film and performance. Previous projects include: Unstill Objects, Gallery S O, London (2016) and a screening of John Smith's films at Vitraria Museum, Venice (2015).