Plastique, works by Marc Couturier, Sven 't Jolle, Mika Rottenberg, Alain Séchas

About

If the purpose of an artwork is to inextricably link both substance and form and thus creating objects, images, signs or volumes laden with meaning, poetry or humor, this supposes the impossibility to resort to language as a user manual or any didactic commentaries. Observing should suffice.

In that respect, even if the works reunited here are extremely different from one another, they each possess and are composed of their own significant power may it be poetic, humoristic ... plastic!

Marc Couturier
(1946, lives and works in Paris)

Marc Couturier captures, throughout a presentation often in situ and subtle, what ordinarily escapes the naked eye: the imperceptible, the invisible, the poetic. In parallel to another side of his work (artworks not made by the hands of man named «redressements») which various shapes allude to recognizable figures or landscapes, Marc Couturier develops an artwork « made by the hands of man ». For Plastique the artist undertook two in situ works: a wall drawing in silverpoint which spreads out on three walls of the exhibition space, inviting the audience to immerse inside his drawing; a copro-aluminum mat inviting to contemplation. A gold plated samba wood strip completes all of this.

Marc Couturier is exhibited at the Espace Muraille in Geneva (solo show, May 18th – August 26th), at the Grand Palais in Paris (Jardins, until the 27th of July), at the Villa Datris in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (De Nature en Sculpture, until the 1st of November), at the Seoul Museum of Art (May 30th – August 15th).

Sven ‘t Jolle
(1966, Anvers, lives and works in Melbourne)

Sven ‘t Jolle’s work can be interpreted as a humorous and passionate review of capitalism. The four recent sculptures presented here reveal how the artist borrows historical references and daily evocations in order to create constellations of images, forms and ideas. He explores throughout his work values of modern society, addressing its inequalities with an engaged humor. The pun, which is also the name of his latest exhibition (Age of Entitlement / Age of Enlightenment), isn’t a coincidence. Les Lumières, the leading philosophical movement in XVIII century Europe, based its ideals on reason, tolerance and freedom. Today, while these terms are often applied to the neo-liberal society in which we live, their signification – or their understanding – has shifted in a spectacular way, as Sven ‘t Jolle underlines it in his work. By giving the subtitle – Affordable Tooth Extraction to the exhibition, ‘t Jolle undermines any type of pedantry with an absurd verbal juxtaposition, which directly refers to the dismantling of the Welfare State and it’s health care service. 

A great solo exhibition was recently dedicated to the artist at the Wiels in Bruxelles (January – March 2017). A catalogue was published on the occasion. His artworks from the series « Sans-papiers » are presented at the Kunsthalle of Mulhouse until the 27th of August.

Mika Rottenberg
(1976, Argentina, lives and works in NY)

Over the past fifteen years, Mika Rottenberg has developed a practice combining videos and installations, drawings and sculptures. She has created immersive environments that act as cases for her films, and thus participate in blurring frontiers between imaginary and reality. Her series of Textures, type of sculpture (or paintings one may wonder) was developed for her solo show in 2013 at Magasin III in Stockholm. Made of casted resin, hand painted, these objects seem to originate directly from her film sets. As if they were snatched from them or simply left behind. Laid out on the bare ground along the wall, these Textures act as tangible and visual references of her emblematic conjuncture between video and installation.

Mika Rottenberg will be presenting her newest video installation during the Skulptur Projectk of Munster (from the 10th of June). A solo exhibition will also be dedicated at the Bass Museum of Miami in December 2017.

Alain Séchas
(1955, lives and works in Paris)

Initiated mid 1980’s, Alain Séchas’ work relies on the practice of quick and incisive drawings, which echo our daily choices, underlining in one trait the certain beauty of an instant or the derision of a situation. The figure of the anthropomorphic cat, which appeared for the first time in the mid 1990’s, is emblematic of his way of reporting gestures and postures of the human being, in a humorous almost dark way.

Prior to his great multimedia installations which he developed mixing sculpture, drawings, paintings, neon lights, sounds and animations movies, the artist comes back as of 2008 to a more intimate technique, which renews with « the pleasure that comes from doing things on your own ». He then chose to explore throughout his paintings and technical components, material and formal, evolving between abstraction and figuration.

From the abundant interlacing in his first acrylic paintings, keeping to reality through their titles, he then switches to oil paintings, with a more lyrical followed by a geometrical style and manages to show images through crystallization of lines and color. The cat made his comeback in 2013, suddenly appearing from the colorful backgrounds of Séchas’s paintings. This ordinary hero is introduced in delicate, acid and witty skits, wandering in big cities, strolling along the beach; the very beginning of stories to which we are all familiar because of it’s resonation with current events. His tribulations pining like many butterflies, small flaws, big clichés or perfect moments in a man’s scurry life.

In exclusivity for Plastique, Alain Séchas is presenting a new series of paintings, some oil most acrylic, shown for the first time.

A solo exhibition was recently dedicated to the artist at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2016), and a new exhibition is scheduled in 2018 at the Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte Croix des Sables d’Olonne.