Latifa Echakhch
Thursday, 20 February 2014
Work from her current exhibition at galerie kamel mennour.
“On the occasion of her third solo show at galerie kamel mennour, Latifa Echakhch will exhibit in the new space on the rue du Pont de Lodi. In line with the works presented at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 2012 and for the Marcel Duchamp Prize at the FIAC in 2013, the artist once more mobilizes the idea of a ghost show, deserted by both audience and performers after some uncertain disaster. The sky has fallen into the large downstairs room, as though having wormed its way in through the high glass roof: it is a theater backdrop painted azure blue and dotted with clouds that has slipped to the floor like a dress left at the foot of the bed. Standing before this crumpled, unfinished canvas that is too large for the space, one’s thoughts turn to the skies of 17th century paintings, to Nicolas Poussin, and to the golden age of theater. A melancholic sense of non finito hangs over the abandoned scene. The walls are hung with paintings. Blue ink has seeped capillaries into the white canvas like some kind of vibrant sap, creating coralloid arborescences or a tight network of branches. As in most of her ink works, Latifa Echakhch initiates a minimal procedure, then lets time and the materials do their work—in this instance, the “phthalo” ink, developed in the 1930s from the chemical compound phthalocyanine, whose deep blue recalls the artist’s stencils. Due to this part of the process that is given over to chance, these images might almost be called “acheiropoietic” (or “not made by human hand”), a category in which we also find the Veil of Veronica and Chinese scholar’s rocks. All Around Fades to a Heavy Sound… is the title of one of these spectral works. The collation of all the titles creates a story—a story about a walk, about the narrator’s wandering in a forest that is reminiscent of the first verses of The Divine Comedy, though the text also evokes “the latest landscape”. Perhaps a decomposing sky glimpsed through the foliage of a strange blue forest. ” – galerie kamel mennour