The Rings of Saturn at Galerie Derouillon

Artists: Anastasia Bay, Antonia Brown, Santiago Evans Canales, Alma Feldhandler, Alex Foxton, Shuo Hao, Vojtech Kovarik, Tal Regev

Exhibition title: The Rings of Saturn

Venue: Galerie Derouillon, Paris, France

Date: January 12 – February 25, 2023

Photography: Grégory Copitet / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Galerie Derouillon, Paris

Note: The exhibition’s press release is available here

“The Rings of Saturn” by W.G. Sebald is a collection of stories, digressions that describe and reflect his narrator’s meandering walks along the east coast of England and the wanderings of his melancholy.

A curtain opens on a reclining figure, in the middle of a dream, perhaps levitating?

You have to let yourself drift along Sebald’s narrative rings that entangle his characters in meanders from which they cannot extract themselves and which have no clear destination.

A solitary wanderer walks through a thick fog in which the lights of the night are reflected, surrounded by characters who we do not know if they are fantasies or reality.
A little further on, we seem to disturb the conversation of these unsettling characters with shining eyes – we remain outside their circle.

As we move through his stories and unravel the articulation of the author’s themes, we become a new character, an active participant in the course of the book.

A gigantic flower opens at our feet, disclosing its own history – from its culture to the use of its properties – and inviting us to take the risk of paying a new kind of attention to what/who is around us.
In this ethereal cloud, we are then facing the portrait of an aura that eclipses the body in the background. It is a vessel abandoned by all the invisible things we carry within us, leaving room for the way memories and feelings are embodied.

Sebald’s obsession with silkworms, which runs throughout the text, evokes the organic germination of ideas and their complex interweaving.

The Guardian watches over this screen that hides as much as it reveals. He ties together different symbols to create new, more personal ones. Myths are constantly revived by the one who tells them.

Sebald creates worlds within worlds; he offers us multiple threads to follow and finally forms a giant ring that links together disparate narratives and experiences.

The Past and the Present are entwined in a silent embrace. The moon alone comes back to illuminate their melancholic figures.

Sebald builds a galaxy of many stars out of many small stories.

A (falsely) threatening shadow then appears, perhaps the physical manifestation of our thoughts, which engages us in new convolutions.

In astrology, Saturn is usually associated with periods of transition and maturation. It is also the planet of melancholy and necessary introspection. To the cyclicality of the planet answers that of chance encounters thanks to which we examine our own melancholy through that of others, and remains above all this incessant inner journey.

-Marion Coindeau

The Rings of Saturn, 2023, exhibition view, Galerie Derouillon, Paris

Tal Regev, Into Her, 2022, Oil and pastel on canvas, 170 x 150 cm 66 7/8 x 59 inches

Alma Feldhandler, Shtetl de Slonim (1), 2021, Oil on linen 29 x 21 cm (encadré) 11 3/8 x 10 5/8 inches (framed)

Alma Feldhandler, Just Before Călăraşi, Summer (Green) (II), 2022, Colored pencil and wax pastel on paper, 24 x 23 cm (encadré), 9 1/2 x 9 inches (framed)