Galerie Eva Presenhuber is delighted to announce its first solo exhibition of works by Latifa Echakhch entitled „The scene takes place“.
The show will feature new bodies of work, placed together within the space in order to create a landscape. On the one hand, Echakhch will display a new set of paintings, which refer to earlier themes and techniques of her work, whilst creating an entire new vision. She uses thin linen dipped in blue ink, letting it sink and grow onto the canvas. One can relate these works to the series of the Tambour paintings but also to her emblematic work „À chaque stencil une revolution (For each stencil a revolution)“, which was recently shown at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Furthermore, the space will host an installation of a scenery, resembling stage sets and inspired by the backdrop of the representation of Wagner’s Tannhäuser at the Bayreuth Festival in 1955. The viewer will actually only be able to see the back of the scenery upon entering the space, and here lies the interest of the artist, one will have to traverse the entire exhibition in order to see the painted front of the installation.
Latifa Echakhch has long been fascinated by the idea of the aftermath, of what happens once the action or event is over and the remains and traces of such scenes, an interest displayed in her recent exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich centred around the theme of an abandoned circus, and that she pursues here beyond the initial point of the viewing, by inviting the viewer to feel the absence within a space, of something that was once there.
Echakhch was born in Morocco and left for France at three years old; she now lives and works in Martigny in Switzerland. As a result, her associations with 'cultural mementos' are complicated as they offer a ghost of absence where nostalgia would be. Thus she constantly re-imagines and re-evaluates objects, making cultural relics nearly worthless and random objects precious. Yet for her, the idea of emptiness goes still further. Only when supposedly known objects have been emptied of their original meaning can they be read in new ways – this process is at the core of her artistic practice, presenting objects with such a delicate vision and into new contexts and new forms. She has, since the beginning of her career, reflected on the often prejudiced perception of national and religious identities in works that are both poetic and conceptual.
She has received great institutional acclaim through solo exhibitions of her work presented at MAC Lyon, France, Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Columbus Museum of Art, United States and Kunsthaus, Zurich, Switerland (2012); Museum Haus Esters, Kunstmuseen, Krefeld, Germany (2011); MACBA, Barcelona, Spain (2010); Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2009) and Tate Modern, London, England (2008). Her work has been featured in thematic exhibitions internationally, such as “It is what it is. Or is it?”, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2012); ILLUMInations, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2011); 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2010); Flow, Studio Museum Harlem, New York (2008); and Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, New York and Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley, Massachusetts (2007). hidden
