Alexis Destoop's solo exhibition at CHAUFFEUR in Sydney, Australia.
Alexis Destoop: Between colours that are suspended
November 26 - December 23
CHAUFFEUR Gallery, Sydney
It is a time when sailing on unchartered waters seems to be a common feeling.
No clear horizon to look towards or direct the gaze, no solid shore to drop anchor.
I feel I am in the same position as Durer’s Melencolia. Seated, with the elbow on a knee
and the head, slightly tilted, resting on the fisted hand – the gaze is fixed, hard to interpret,
oriented towards an undefined direction.
It is a time when the conditional form has come back in vogue: sentences begin with verbs
in the indicative form and then, in a conditioned reflex, inevitably turn to the conditional.
I feel - as my grandmother would say quoting Dante Alighieri - fra color che son sospesi, among
those who are suspended – a bit poised, a bit in a stasis, a bit anxious, a bit in contemplation;
waiting, but not sure for what.
It is a time when it seems that sadness is the common background sound, omnipresent and
yet undefined – a lot of people seem to feel that. A small bug that escapes all chases – you know
it exists and yet it is ungraspable.
I feel I am in need to sublimate this uncertainty, an alchemic need for a positive and productive
transformation but I am still looking for the alembic to complete the process.
--
Francesca Recchia
The Polis Projects, New York
The multilayered installations and photographs by Alexis Destoop excavate the interfaces between (neo)colonial, ecological, economic and geopolitical environments. Through his lens, the Belgian-born Sydney based artist captures the landscape not as a sublime natural object but a scrutinised human artefact: a contentious zone where human intervention, borders and frontiers collide.
Alexis Destoop Lives and Works in Sydney. Born in 1971, Kortrijk, Belgium, Destoop Completed Master in Fine Art at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, Tourcoing, France (2002). Destoop has exhibited extensively in major institutions such as Museum of Contemporary Art, (SMAK) Ghent, Museum of Contemporary Art (MARTa,), Herford, Germany (2009); 18th Sydney Biennale, AGNSW (2012), Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France (2012); 1st Riga Biennale, Latvia (2018) Vlaams Culturhuis, Amsterdam (2019); Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia (MMOMA) (2019) Centre for Contemporary Art, Hasselt, Belgium (2020); Rotterdam Film Festival (2020) and Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) Riga (2020). Public collections include National Bank of Belgium, Brussels and ARGOS Collection, Brussels. Private collections in the USA, NZ, Belgium, Germany and Australia.
Main Room:
Contre-Jour I-IV
(2020)
Pigment on Cotton Rag mounted on Dibond 75 x 50 cm
Unframed Edition of 5 + 2 ap
Small Room:
Fata Morgana I-II
(2015-2020)
Pigment on Cotton Rag mounted on Alupanel 75 x 50 cm
Unframed Edition of 5 + 2 ap
