Artist: Julie Escoffier
Exhibition title: Ellipsis
Venue: Efrain Lopez Gallery, Chicago, US
Date: June 24 – July 24, 2016
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Efrain Lopez Gallery, Chicago
The space of ellipsis is with neither origin nor clear reflection,
but rather triple mirroring of a sort;
the hybrid becomes the multiplicitous
Elementary dicta: the mark is of an omission, unfinished by principle; generos by exposing chance and overcoming failure.
Escoffier’s current exhibition may be described as photographic. Photography, usually understood as a mechanical imprint of the world’s fleeting images on solid surfaces, is here transformed to an alchemical terrain, where images appear through photo and other chemical reactions on architectural segments. Its desire is to expose a hidden truth; the latent grotte that surrounds it.
A proposal for a balanced, active contradiction of a production that nullifies itself in presence.
The grotte, meaning cave, a fundamental metaphor for Escoffier, is present in the space with five large-scale segmented photographs of two prehistoric cave sites, Les grottes du Cornadore, St Nectaire, and l’Aven d’ Orgnac, Orgnac-l’Aven, both not far from the artist’s residence. The carefully assembled segments are adhered to the gallery walls with homemade flour glue, highlighting a tenuous future.
How can one record – through objects – a silence in a rhythm?
This experiment, in form of an installation, was initiated in virtual darkness and geographical isolation. It came to light with quick, deliberate energies that are the outcome of elliptical practice –thus forcing structure and destruction; deconstruction and recomposition. It required that the artist submit to Dionysian energies; her studio became the cave in darkness, and the exhibition the cage in light; the stage of the ritual became the theater. In it, the sculptures are composed of and anointed by substances as varied as wine, roses, bleach, and salt. They perform, mutate and transform throughout the duration of the show.
Julie Escoffier (b. 1989 in Lyon, France) lives and works between Mexico City and Lyon. Escoffier holds a BFA and MFA from École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (2013). Escoffier is the recipient of the Fondation Kenza grant in 2013, and did a postgraduate residency in Mexico City at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura y Escultura (La Esmeralda). Escoffier has presented solo exhibitions at Les Territoires, Montreal, Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City, Breve, Mexico City; group exhibitions and presentations at Museo Universtario del Chopo, Mexico City, Material Art Fair, Mexico City, Le Magasin, Grenoble, Les Subsistances, Lyon, among others. Escoffier is also co-founder of the curatorial project Kairos.
– Ruslana Lichtzier
