ART CITIES:London-Tatiana Trouvé
In her work, Tatiana Trouvé explores the relations between time and space by constructing enigmatic environments founded on logical, architectural, and material distortions. These settings are manifested in large-scale drawings as well as large-scale, site-specific installations. The constant vacillation between the drawings and the sculptural and architectural installations elicits a sense of trickling from one medium to another.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Kamel Mennour Archive
The various spaces created in Tatiana Trouvé’s works contain the concept of time in diverse ways: spatially, semiotically, and poetically, as if attempting to map that which has vanished and no longer exists. Pursuing a process begun with “Prepared Space” shown at Petach Tikva Museum of Art in Israel, Tatiana Trouvé in her solo exhibition “Navigation Map” at Galerie Kamel Mennour in London, transforms the Gallery space into a 3D cartographical space, of the sky and earth at once. Also on view will be Tatiana Trouvé’s “The Shaman” at Frieze Art Fair in London and on October 15, will be inaugurated her solo exhibition “A Quiet Life” at Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris. In “Prepared Space”, upon entering the pace, the viewer encountered a cracked, broken ground on which several sculptural objects were scattered: fragile-looking, temporary shelters of sorts, cast in bronze, aluminum, and copper from used sheets of cardboard which carried their chronicles in their creases, fractures, and scarred surfaces. In “Navigation Map” the atlas is no longer simply a medium of representation, becoming itself a space to inhabit, a work of art, a place of contemplation and prayer. At the same time, the voyage itself transforms into something closer in its execution to a musical or artistic score. The works oscillate between history and fiction, between a general stance and a particular stance, between being conceptual representations of knowledge and of ways in which to organize and represent knowledge, and being carriers of narrative. Structurally speaking, the objects are basic, minimalist constructions, which offer only partial shelter. They are not entirely closed off from the outside, therefore they do not produce an actual interior, but rather interwoven exteriors and interiors that invade one another. In this sense, they offer a series of new perspectives on the world, partial, changing perspectives that swirl and emerge from one another, presenting a fundamental contrast to the all embracing gaze offered by the structure of the panopticon, for instance. As aforesaid, the objects are interspersed in a space set on a cracked, broken ground, possibly due to the passage of time, or to some apocalyptic event. In some sections on the ground, the marks of blankets, cardboard sheets, and various objects are imprinted, as if they had been assimilated or buried in it. This element imbues the space with a degree of disquiet, a sense of implicit danger, that arises both from one’s awareness of the geological movement of the earth, and from the caution that the viewer is required to exercise while moving through this post-apocalyptic sphere. The viewer’s body thus reacts directly to the works, and is denied the neutral position of spectatorship that is historically associated with the concept of the white cube.
Info: Galerie Kamel Mennour, 51 Brook Street, London, Duration 2/10-10/11/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00 and Galerie Kamel Mennour, 47 rue Saint André des Arts, Paris, Duration: 15/10-24/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.kamelmennour.com
