As If Ever A Wave Has Reached The Shore

Midnight. Sleepless. Watching an old Film by Jean Luc Godard. There is this one scene in which the heroine, played by Marina Vlady, who we have followed over the course of the narration is entering into a Parisian cafe.Then …a whispering voice-over, it’s him, Godard himself, he who apparently knew everything about cinema, but also never ceased to believe that cinema and life need each other to exist, to nurture, to infiltrate, to enlighten. So Godard, like speaking in a ghostly inner monologue draws us inside his head while watching the protagonists of his film contemplating.

"But first of all, what is an object? Maybe an object is what serves as a link between subjects, allowing us to live in society, to be together. But since social relations are always ambiguous, since my thoughts divide as much as unite, and my words unite by what they express and isolate by what they omit, since a wide gulf separates my subjective certainty of myself from the objective truth others have of me, since I constantly ended up feeling guilty, even though I feel innocent, since every event changes my daily life, since I always fail to communicate, to understand, to love and be loved, and every failure deepens my solitude, since. I cannot escape the objectivity crushing me, nor the subjectivity expelling me, since I cannot rise to a state of being nor collapse into nothingness... I have to listen, more than ever I have to look around me, at the world, my fellow creature, my brother.

JEAN-LUC GODARD,

Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle, 1967

„Mon semblable, mon frere“, this is what the director quotes from Baudelaire’s preface to the „Fleurs du Mal“ and so does T.S. Eliot in his master poem „Waste land“. It seems the three of them send an exclamation mark to their readers, viewers, addressing the eternal truth: that there is „the other“ - as the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas has put it, that shall be reached and touched…. but how?

This exhibition is asking the same question by gathering international artists from Nigeria, Israel, Germany and France whose works are dealing with various forms of representations of the body, with language, with desire and the multifaceted interconnected ways we exist socially.

Often there seems an invisible membrane between the work and the audience. Some thin veil that separates us - from the other (the other human/ and from the work) even though desire and logic tell us that we are close to them. Drawing especially is a medium that has the ability to evoke and create intimacy, to invite people to share a precious moment of fragility and intensity.Paper itself can be seen as an equivalent to the human skin, a delicate surface that breathes and manifests our connection to the world. Through images of the body we encounter ourselves as we encounter the other in all complex fluidity and shocking and beautiful presence and in ambiguity and doubt. The exhibition follows those depictions and rises the question: what happens in true human encounters?

Jorinde Voigt whose work is situated in the energetic field between the body in perception of itself and its environment, language and the signifier with all its ambiguity takes here a text by sociologist Niklas Lumann, to contemplate his reflections on the semantics of love and passion. Her drawing is an intellectual playground that becomes a map and a diagram of experience. The paradoxes and limitations of scientific recordings are confronted with Voigt questioning how mental images are being evoked and become reality.

Lionel Sabatte has been dealing with notions of the ephemeral and the physical remains of our very existence. Transformation processes and alchemy seem to be his guiding principles over the last years.His portrait drawings of anonymous faces are literally made out of dust that he collects in the Metro stations of Paris. And his beautiful and delicate Bonsai plants carry blossoms of human skin.This tactility of vanity is a gentle call to look at the overlooked and the discarted particals of life.

Roey Victoria Heifetz is a transgender woman, her often large scale drawings depict women that seem both - another person and an older version of herself. Thereby addressing not only the question of the gender transition and the emotional and psychological implications of such a journey but also of the prospect of age. The artist is mercilessly interrogating herself and her vision of the body that she desires. the paper carries all traces of those gestures that seem to peel off the skin to reveal a deeper truth.

Jean-Luc Verna- is lightfootedly dancing between various disciplines in his practice, from drawing, to performance from sculpture to photography. His body is taking an intensely particular role in everything as it is in some ways the sculpted and painted (tatooed) extension of that practice. Verna is celebrating the deepest bonds to those family members of his a self chosen cosmos, among which the singers Nico and Siouxie are constant sources of inspiration. Their lives and music is the echo-chamber in which the suffering and praised bodies, the romantic landscapes and other overlooked subjects art history resonate together.

Roey Victoria Heifetz

Roey Victoria Heifetz (b. 1978, Jerusalem) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Heifetz studied at the Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design in Jerusalem (BFA, MFA) and at the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, USA. Heifetz creates textured drawings of people who identify as transgender women and of herself, often layering portraits of acquaintances with fictional subjects, and exaggerating human features such as skin and muscles. She poses intimate questions in her practice about the body, gender, desire, insecurities, and regrets.

Highlights and collections

Roey Victoria Heifetz has been the recipient of the 2022 LABA, Residency, Berlin, Germany; the 2019 Residency Unlimited, NY, USA; the 2018 18th Street Art Residency, Los Angeles, USA; the 2014 Fountainhead Residency, Miami, USA; the 2012 Kunstlerhaus Bethanien Residency, Berlin, Germany. Heifetz’s work can be found in various national and international collections such as the Israel Museum Collection; Tiroche DeLeon Collection - Serge Tiroche Collection; Ari and Ann Rosenblatt Collection; Thomas Steinle Collection; Marc Zilkkha Collection; Igal Ahouvi Collection; Matthias Camenzind Collection; Jordan Krauss Collection; Kathryn and Dan Mikesell collection; Oliver Emil Mauthe Collection; Amos Schocken Collection.

Françoise Pétrovitch

Françoise Pétrovitch (born 1964) is a multidisciplinary French artist based in Verneuil-sur-Avre. Pétrovitch explores various different media. Her artworks range from ceramics to video to drawing to painting. Françoise has developed a high reputation for her drawings and ink wash works. Similarly, her source of inspiration comes from all different kind of fields for one she cites as inspiration painters like Henri Matisse but also literature written by female authors like Joyce Carol Oates and Marguerite Duras. Ultimtely figuration, specifically the human form, play an important role in Pétrovitch’s art. It adds a narrative quality, but also acts as a support for carefully crafted colourful works that have a sense of otherworldliness.

Highlights and Collections

Françoise Pétrovitch’s works are present in many private and public collections amongst them the Aegon Art Collection, The Hague, Netherlands; the Artothèque du Lot, France; the Bibliothèque Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France; the Centre de la gravure et de l’image imprimée, La Louvière, Belgium; the Château Borély, Musée des arts décoratifs de la faïence et de la mode, Marseille, France ; the Château de Tarascon - Centre d’art Réné d’Anjou, France ; the Collection de la ville de Lorient, France ; the Collection départementale d’art contemporain de la Seine-Saint-Denis, France ; the Fonds municipal de la ville de Paris, France; Fonds national d’art contemporain, Paris, France; Fonds régional d’art contemporain Alsace, Sélestat, France; Fonds régional d’art contemporain Normandie Rouen, Sotteville-lès-Rouen France; Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Marseille, France; Keramis, Centre de la Céramique, La Louvière, France; La Collection Choisy, Choisy-le-Roi, France; Lieu d’Art et Action Contemporaine (LAAC), Dunkerque, France; Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Tarpon Springs, USA; Maison des Arts de Bagneux, Bagneux, France; MAC VAL, Musée d’art contemporain de Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France; Musée d’art moderne de Saint-Etienne, France; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France; Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, France; Musée de la Poste, Paris, France; Musée de Sens, France; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chambéry, France; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, France; Musée Georges de La Tour, Vic-sur-Seille, France ; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Cabinet d’art graphique, Paris, France ; Musée-Château d’Annecy, France ; Musée Jenisch Vevey, Vevey, Switzerland; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C, USA; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands.

Lionel Sabatté

Lionel Sabatté (b. 1975 in Toulouse, France) lives and works between Paris and Los Angeles. He graduated from the École National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2003. Sabatte has been experimenting with characteristics of what it means to be alive, including transformation due to the passage of aging and time, these themes are at the heart of his work. For several years the artist has begun a process of collecting materials that keep the traces of an experience, a living: dust, ashes, charcoal dead skin. These elements are unexpectedly combined and the works created carry with them a delicacy but also a “disturbing strangeness”, giving life to a hybrid bestiary in which creatures from the abyssal depths rub shoulders with small oxidized birds, from islands, bears, wolves, emus, owls, or unicorns. Practicing both the painting, drawing and sculpture, Lionel Sabatté strives to create a dialogue between all his works, into a permanent connection. His research on the mineral and animal gives access to a poetic, sensitive, disturbing visualisation that can form reflection on our condition and the places we occupy in our environment.

Highlights and Collections

Lionel Sabatte’s work can be found in the collections of the ATLANA, Kulturshiftung im Sinclair-Haus, Bad Homburg, Germany; CAFA Art Museum, Pekin, China;Yishu 8, Pekin, China; BNF, Paris, France;Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Etienne Métropole, France; Abbaye de l’escaöadieu, Bonnemazon, France ;Monastère Royal de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, France ;Musée du Gévaudan, Mende, France ;Musée de la Chassse et de la Nature, Paris, France ;CNAP, Centre National des Arts Palstiques, France; Musée de Vernon, France; Ville de de Massy-Palaiseau, Franc; FRAC Réunion, Saint-Leu, France ; Aquarium de Paris, France ; MASC, Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte.Croix, Sables d’Olonne, France ;Vent des forêts, Fresnes-au-Mont, France ; La Maison Rouge – Fondation Antoine de de Galbert, Paris ; Uneso, Etat Mauricien, Maurice.

Sabatté has been awarded with the 2020 Luxembourg Art Prize; 2019 Prize for painting at la Fondation del Duca;2018 Prize for the friends of la Maison Rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert; 2017 Prize for drawing, Drawing Now, Paris; the 2015 Residency Tour Saint-Ange/ Colette Tornier, Seyssins, France;The 2014 Residency pARTage, Institute français de Maurice, Maurice; the 2013 Cent des Forêts, Muese, France and the 2011 Lauréat du Prix Yishu 8, Pekin, China.

Jorinde Voigt

Jorinde Voigt (b. 1977, Frankfurt) is a German artist based in Berlin. Voigt has worked as a professor for conceptual Drawing and Painting at AdBK Akademie der Bildenden Künste, in Munich from 2014-2019. Today she is a Professor of Conceptual Drawing and Painting at University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HfBK). Jorinde holds a Bachelors degree in Visual Arts, Photography and Visual Cultural Studies, as well as a Master of Visual Art from the University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany. She primarily works in the medium of drawing - her artworks have been likened to musical scores, scientific diagrams, and notational models. Jorinde is taking an array of natural and psychological phenomenons and turning them into pictorial depictions. Recently, she has been including literature and philosophical texts within her work.

Nil & Karin Romano

Nil & Karin Romano (b. 1990 Tel-Aviv) are an artist-duo born in Tel-Aviv City, Israel. Nil & Karin use strong and bold colours together with surrealistic scenes that unfold in relation to the complexity of the human soul and emotions through chaos, ritualism, and nihilism. Their style is intense, ritualistic and cult-like focusing on beliefs, religion, relationships between women, symbolism, queer relationships, and magic.

Jean-Luc Verna

Jean-Luc Verna (b. 1966, Nice, France) lives and works in Paris, France. Verna’s practice spans drawing, photography, film and music. For him, drawing is a thoughtful and complex tool which helps him centre or reminisce on past experiences, while using many different materials in the process switching between drawing and tracing paper as well as photocopy. The ensuing photocopy is then rubbed with trichlorethylene in order to transfer it to the wall or onto textiles, where it is redrawn in black chalk, coloured pencil and eyeliner. Afterwards, ornamental elements like black stones, sequins, feathers and strings of beads get added to the surface. Verna has named the English singer Siouxsie Sioux as inspiration and his muse after first encountering her in an Alain Maneval’s TV show as a teenager. Therefore, a large part of his work, specifically his drawings, have become an hommage to his fascination of Sioux.

Highlights and Collections

Verna's works are present in many prestigious national and international collections such as the Artothèque de Villeurbanne, France; Artothèque de Pessac, France; Artothèque d'Auxerre, France ; Artothèque de Strasbourg, France ; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France ; MacVal, Vitry sur Seine, France; MoMA, New York, USA;François Pinault Collection, Paris, France ;Fondation Francès, Senlis, France ;Collection Famille Moulin, Paris, France ; Collection Fellner, Klagenfurt, Germany ;Collection Lewis, Los Angeles, USA ; FRAC Alsace, Sélestat, France ; FRAC Picardie, Amiens, France ;FRAC Pays de La Loire, Carquefou, France ;FRAC Basse Normandie, Caen, France ;FRAC Haute-Normandie, Sotteville Les Rouen, France ; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France ;FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque, France ;FRAC Haute-Normandie, Rouen, France ;FRAC Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur, Marseille, France ; Fonds d'art contemporain, état de Genève, Suisse ; Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Puteaux, France ;Espace arts plastiques Venissieux, France ;Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France ;The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings, New York, USA RAM Foundation, Rotterdam, Pays-Bas ;Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain de la Ville de Paris, Paris ;Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco ;Le Vent des Forêts, Fresnes-au-Mont, France.

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As If Ever A Wave Has Reached The Shore