
Sara Ouhaddou – Villa du Parc, Annemasse
Exposition Quand je n’aurai plus de feuille, j’écrirai sur le blanc de l’œil. Commissariat de Gabrielle Camuset. Photo
Etienne Armandon
Eric Aupol
Yto Barrada
Matthias Bruggmann
Antonio Caballero
Marcos Carrasquer
John Casey
Odile Decq
Simon Faithfull
Vanessa Fanuele
Harald Fernagu
Speedy Graphito
Patrick Guns
Louis Heilbronn
Khaled Jarrar
Richard Mudariki
Sara Ouhaddou
Nigel Rolfe
Walter Van Beirendonck
Clémence Van Lunen
Simon Willems
22-06-2019 > 08-09-2019
Estancia FEMSA – Casa Luis Barragán is pleased to present French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada’s first solo exhibition in Latin America, entitled Double Skin, which brings together a set of newly commissioned works. As the exhibition’s title suggests, Barrada deals with notions of aesthetic ambiguity –which resonate with many aspects of Barragán’s work and life. Double Skin also engages Barragán’s deep interest in magic and enigma, which he understood to be crucial elements of architecture, as well as with his use of the formal and symbolic tension between concepts such as opacity/clarity, desire/restriction, openness/enclosure.
In the studio space of Barragán’s house, Barrada covers the walls with a second skin: a wallpaper from the series Paste Papers (2019). These works are based on designs she found in different books belonging to Luis Barragán, such as: The Grain Silo-Citadels of Morocco; Coatlicue; The Art of Gardens; Max Ernst; Spanish Andalucia and Parables and Evangelical Allegories, among others. The practice of decorating book covers and endpapers with paste paper designs dates back to the seventeenth century. Originally used by bookbinders, paste paper was also applied to line drawers in modest homes. Barrada amplifies this discrete function in her piece by transforming the paste paper into an exterior ornament for the studio walls, thus bringing intimacy into full view. This gesture of transportation acts as a rich metaphor for the many ambiguities implicit in Barragán’s life and work.
Dispersed throughout the rooms of the house we also find five chromatic collages, the Practice Pieces (Color Charts) (2019), made with hand-dyed silk velvets. Inspired by dyers, and the color chart sampling systems used in textile conservation, these pieces are inscribed within Barrada’s long-standing interest in educational materials, platforms, and structures. Both Mexico and Morocco boast long histories of natural dye production, including cochineal, indigo, and Tyrian purple.
Lastly, in the library of the house we find the short film Horsehair, Confetti, and Rice(2019), projected directly onto a yellow monochrome painting made in Barragán’s architecture studio. The film is a piece of experimental cinema, with a strong emphasis on materials and textures, in which a wealth of colors and shapes unravel. The hallucinatory quality of the film also alludes to historical artistic imaginaries that stem from both Mexico and Morocco. As such, the exhibition pays homage to the strong influence of Morocco’s vernacular architecture—and the country’s material culture in general—on Barragán’s, and his friend and notable collaborator Mathias Goeritz’ architectural oeuvres. Furthermore, Double Skin is framed within Barrada’s long engagement with architecture and the history of modernism through multiple past projects.
More information: Estancia FEMSA
Exposition Quand je n’aurai plus de feuille, j’écrirai sur le blanc de l’œil. Commissariat de Gabrielle Camuset. Photo
Vanessa Fanuele, Ultra #17, huile sur toile, 30 x 48 cm, 2020 Oniric Landscapes Exposition du 9 février
La galerie Polaris félicite Yto Barrada pour sa participation à la Biennale 2022 du Whitney Museum of American
Speedy Graphito au Musée en Herbe Speedy Graphito présente sa nouvelle exposition personnelle, Mondes Imaginaires, au Musée en
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