ART-PRESENTATION: Jan Fabre-My Only Nation Is Imagination
Jan Fabre has worked in the theatre and is an internationally renowned choreographer. Over the last 20 years he has also developed a body of art work based on a variety of materials, including blood, ball-point pen ink, beetle wings, bones, stuffed animals and marble. Jan Fabre is an inveterate draughtsman, creating sculptures and installations that explore topics such as metamorphosis, the dialogue between art and science, humankind’s relationship to nature and the artist as a warrior of beauty.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Studio Trisorio Archive
Sculptures, drawings and videos, all part of Jan Fabre’s study of the relationship between art and science, are on presentation at his exhibition entitled “My Only Nation is Imagination” at Maeght Foundation. A great designer, Jan Fabre makes sculptures and installations that explore the question of metamorphosis, the dialogue between art and science, the relationship between humans and nature as well as the question of the artist as a “warrior and servant” of beauty. The body is central to Fabre’s artistic universe and this exhibit gathers a nucleus of works which delve into the nature of the brain, defined by the artist as “The sexiest part of the human body”. What is beauty? Who is an artist? How do neurons respond to classical art and what, instead, happens if viewing a work of contemporary art? This and many other questions are the focus of a series of works in which Fabre is spurred into examining the physiological processes which govern artistic creation and enjoyment. Fabre plays on ambiguity and taboos of our society for denouncing our hypocrisy. Jan Fabre interests with the beetles specially their carapaces he observes, analyzes, decorticate and sticking side by side for making canvas with changing colors. Jan Fabre estimates that the brain is a strange organ because it is still unknown and outside seems to be dangerous. But the brain plays an important part in erotism by stimulating the erection. Jan Fabre doesn’t hesitate to represent himself riding a brain like a horse or by putting on a same line four brains of four famous people (Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein or Frankenstein) for building the ultimate brain. There is also the showing of the video “Do we feel with our brain and think with our heart?”, a film-performance in which Fabre engages in a dialogue with Giacomo Rizzolatti, the neuroscientist who discovered mirror neurons, which are fundamental in explaining empathy between individuals. The artist creates surprising, sensual and playful associations between the symbols of his art and the objects used in Rizzolatti’s experiments, in a sort of philosophical-aesthetic speculation which explores the circularity between understanding and pleasure and between sensation, emotion and cognition.
Info: Fondation Maeght, 623 chemin des Gardettes, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Duration: 30/6-11/11/18, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-19:00 (July-September) or 10:00-18:00 (October-June), www.fondation-maeght.com
