AlbumArte presents
Sogni d’oro
Iván Cantos, Guillaume Castel, Raphaël Thierry, Samuel Yal, William Wright
An exhibition curated by Ariane C-Y
Opening reception on Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 6:30pm
Until July 15, 2016
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On Wednesday, May 4 th 2016 at 6:30pm, AlbumArte will inaugurate Sogni d’Oro, an exhibition curated by Ariane C-Y, which will continue to be open to the public until July 15th 2016. The project is realized in collaboration with the Institut Français in Rome and the Real Academia de España en Roma.
Five international artists and one curator will be presented in Italy for the first time.
Within the space’s rooms dreamy sculptures and weightless installations follow each other, inviting the viewer to confront with his\her own subconscious. A feeling of peaceful rarefaction which frees both imagination and introspection.
The study and analysis with structures of nature is a source of suggestion for Guillaume Castel, who creates a monumental sculpture made of iron and gold, placed in the middle of the big room, and represents the world of dreaming, inspired by nature’s motifs and shapes.
Raphaël Thierry employs natural materials such as the wood from fruit boxes used at his local market, in order to express his own research of idealization and freedom, conceiving a wall installation in the big room and using charcoal for his various sized visionary drawings located in the other rooms.
Light is pivotal in the poetics of Samuel Yals, who uses a kind of very bright white porcelain . His sculptures, suspended around the space, suggest vulnerability and potential instability, placing emphasis on daydreaming and on the bodies’ boundaries with its sorrounding space.
Iván Cantos contributes to the collective exhibition with a couple of sleek sculptures in ceramic covered with graphite, which feature a melancholic, blank mood, whilist William Wright investigates the peace of sleeping in his painting characterized by a naive and nostalgic style.
Sogni d’oro is a project born in partnership between AlbumArte and the pop-up Galerie Ariane C-Y, in Paris. Ariane C-Y, often exports her idea of Pop-up Gallery to important institutions, such as Beelden aan Zee in the Netherlands, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and the ZARYA Center of Contemporary Art Vladivostok in Russia.
«Sogni d’Oro is a project born from the collaboration between AlbumArte and Galerie Ariane C-Y, a pop-up gallery based in Paris. Five international artists, Ivan Cantos, Guillaume Castel, Raphaël Thierry, William Wright and Samuel Yal, show a selection of artworks, most of them commissioned especially for the space of AlbumArte.
In Italian, “Sogni d’Oro” means “Sweet dreams”, literally “Golden dreams”. The dream has inspired artists since Antiquity as a theme that reveals yearnings and fears of the dreamer. Science is still unable to fully explain this phenomenon that concentrates the poetry of a soul. The sleeping mind opens a space of freedom where the dreamer is detached from physical limits. Oneiric iconography encourages an escape, a meditation on human being and its unseizable part, mysterious fruit of the imagination.
Opening the show, Sogni d’Oro was painted by William Wright: a distilled bedroom, quiet and calm. The room intimacy allows the viewer to extract himself from the outside restlessness, the life noise. Torpor leads to an abandon. The vegetal torsion of Pétale (Guillaume Castel) and the ascending movement of Verso l’Alto (Raphaël Thierry) both evoke the dreamer’s freedom. The entire room develops into an open landscape. Consciousness frees itself from the body limits as evoked by Incubi d’Oro (Samuel Yal). A skinned face hangs by a nail. The violence of the scene contrasts with the fragility of the golden fragments, traces of an inner poetry.
Consciences collectives series (Raphaël Thierry) repeats the drawing of an eye in 21 charcoals. The open eyelid drowses and then shuts. The second room stresses the time when one falls asleep and the awakening of the inner look. Synesthésie (Samuel Yal) shows the woven link between the open body and the world. Synaesthesia is a phenomenon by which two senses or more are associated. The Synesthésie series stresses the fine link between touch and sight. One sees and his sight touches the world, meanwhile in return the world reaches an untouchable, unfathomable, incorruptible self. On the opposite wall, Ivan Cantos evokes how dreams can overtake the dreamer himself. B.R-1765 figures the bust of a man with closed eyes. The Spanish artist was affected by the image of a drowned migrant on the coast of Gibraltar a few years ago, time before the present and more mediatised crisis. This unidentified man seems asleep, washed-up victim of his golden dreams. The tide can reveal horror, but also an inner poetry as evoked by the video Spuma (Samuel Yal).
Cabeza de Corazón (Ivan Cantos) belongs to the series Imagineria in which the sculptor distorts bodies in favour of Idea. The ceramic represents a man with a heart-shaped head. The organ where emotions lay takes over the brain. The third room shows how reason fades away during the sleep, enabling a freer consciousness. The charcoal La Fin du monde (Raphaël Thierry) sends back to l’Origine du monde by Courbet. The close-up and the round frame focus the sight onto intimacy. The mind wanders from one subject to the other, freed from any logic. Territoire (Guillaume Castel) redraws this inner map.
Last, Samuel Yal represents the explosion of a face, its Dissolution in space. The face fragments shows a passage between presence and absence, visible and invisible. They are moved by a perpetual strength of expansion creating a semi-spherical space. The volume reaches the scale of the viewer. The dreamer spreads out of his own body. The sculpture reaches emptiness. Nœvus – Or (Samuel Yal) stresses this absence. The inside of the globe is covered with shards of golden leaves, dregs of an inner oneiric landscape. The awaken consciousness only keeps a fading memory of its dreams ». Ariane C-Y
May 5, 2016 | AlbumArte and Ivàn Cantos have been invited at the RAE – Reale Academia de España en Roma to talk about Ivàn Cantos’ work and AlbumArte’s activities . In the presence of the Director of the RAE Mrs. Ángeles Albert.
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Iván Cantos (1967) | Lives and works in Madrid, Spain. Iván Cantos is a Spanish sculptor, painter and drawer. His work explores the individual, focusing on the expression of the inner self. He sculpts in wood and terracotta, often adding a layer of oil painting, in the Spaniard tradition. His portraits in bust or full-length describe an expression, a mood, rather than a specific individual. Many of his painted or sculpted works can be seen as poetic depictions of his inner world. Iván Cantos has studied in Spain and was sent to the UK and Russia for residences. He exhibits in Madrid and Paris.
Guillaume Castel (1980) | Lives and works in Plouégat-Guérand, France. Guillaume Castel is a French sculptor. He uses materials such as wood, concrete and steel to evoke Nature and landscapes from his home region near Morlaix in Brittany. Geometrical shapes designed in raw materials describe Nature, its fragility and elegance. Guillaume Castel is a self-taught artist. He travels for short residences several times a year and delivers public commissions ever year. He exhibited at Grandeur, a show on French monumental sculpture at Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, Netherlands in 2014. He will exhibit several monumental sculptures at the Tuileries, gardens of le Louvre, in June 2016.
Raphaël Thierry (1972) | Lives and works in Paris and Avignon, France. Raphaël Thierry is a French painter, drawer and sculptor. He has developed several identities in order to pursue his explorations in the visual Arts. Raphaël Thierry seeks light in his figurative paintings and charcoals, mainly portraits, nudes and landscapes. He has a more conceptual approach as “Paolo Cari” and one based on gesture and calligraphy as “Klaus Ramka”. Raphaël Thierry studied at Penninghen in Paris. He was a Pensionnaire for 18 months at Villa Medici in Rome. He then started exhibiting regularly in France, UK and USA. In 2014, he also exhibited in Moscow, Russia.
Samuel Yal (1982) | Lives and works in Saint-Cloud, France. (2016 in Madrid) Samuel Yal is a French sculptor and filmmaker. He uses porcelain as his favorite media. His work focuses on the body and face stressing their relation to the surrounding space. His sculptures, often suspended, emphasize the presence and absence of the individual, the way one projects himself into the world and is conversely shaped by it. Samuel Yal studied at ENAAI in Chambéry, France and in Sorbonne. He is a pensionnaire at Casa de Velazquez in Madrid this year. Samuel Yal is also a filmmaker in animation, his second short-film was screened in April 2016, a week before his new solo show Noevus. Samuel Yal exhibits mainly in France. He is the youngest sculptor who exhibited at Grandeur, at Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, Netherlands in 2014. This summer, one of his sculptures is part of a group show at Portrait d’Artiste in Alter at FRAC Haute Normandie, France.
William Wright (1971) | Lives and works in London, UK. William Wright is a British painter and drawer. His paintings depict mainly landscapes painted after drawings sketched from nature. His naïve style conveys a poetic idea of these intimate sceneries. They have a melancholic ache that comes from someone who is a profound observer. They are wonderfully quiet and distilled, all extraneous detail taken out of them. They become meditations on a world less packed to the brim, like a place in a washed out dream or a far off memory. William Wright studied at Leeds Metropolitan University. He exhibits mainly in the UK in galleries and museums, and in France since 2015.
