On affection: Benoît Maire
Catalonia, Barcelona, 03/18/2017 - 04/28/2017
Carrer Isaac Peral 7, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
NoguerasBlanchard is pleased to announce the third iteration of On Affection, a group exhibition extended in time in the gallery’s space in L´Hospitalet focusing on performative practices that emphasize bodily experience and its ability to affect and be affected. Over the period of one season, participating artists are: Mercedes Azpilicueta, Fermin Jimenez Landa, Benoît Maire, Jacopo Miliani, Bruce Nauman, Christodoulos Panayiotou and Cally Spooner.
What we call performance these days is not the same as it was in its beginning. The practice has gone through many changes across the years while the supremacy of the object has been questioned. What hasn´t changed through the past years is the affective potential of performative practices upon audiences. Affection is the process whereby affect – in the Deleuzian sense – is transmitted between bodies and there is no secure distinction between the ‘individual’ and the ‘environment’. In short, Affect cannot be fully realised in language but only through the body grammar.
On this occasion, French artist Benoît Maire presents a new work, Castling Pieces, Piece 1 to 14 (2017). Taking as its’ starting point the installation Letre created for La Verrière (Brussels) this work is an archipelago of sculptural situations in which performances activate relations between the objects on site. Made of what he describes as «decided objects» and «waste» – these two terms shape his work and refer to the materials transformed by the artist into sculptural named objects, and also connect to the residue from decisions made on certain objects, which are thus «undecided» and unnamed. As in previous works, the artist pinpoints a question that governs his practice: categorization of objects (in the show such categories are: hidden, either/or forgotten, decided objects, disaster, those, natural, man-made, amongst others). This installation is formed by more than 70 elements presented on a display wooden board that can all be combined into 14 pieces to be castled on the site via performances.
