Mandy El-Sayegh at Bétonsalon Centre d’art et de recherche

Artist: Mandy El-Sayegh

Exhibition title: Ser, sin serlo

Curated by: Mélanie Bouteloup

Venue: Bétonsalon Centre d’art et de recherche, Paris, France

Date: September 17 – December 14, 2019

Photography: All photographs copyright and courtesy the artist and Bétonsalon Centre d’art et de recherche

Note: Exhibition booklet is available here. Floor plan is available here

In september 2019, Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research, hosts the first solo exhibition in a public French institution by London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh.

Moving between linguistic, material, and corporeal registers, El-Sayegh’s work examines the role of painting to explore trauma, psychoanalysis and subjectivity, creating meaning that signals a breakdown in, or disturbance of, systems and orders.

Drawing from a wide range of research and reference material, El-Sayegh incorporates pop cultural imagery, scientific diagrams, commercial packaging as well as objects from her personal archive, decontextualizing the familiar to create new meanings. El-Sayegh characterises her works as being preoccupied with ‘part-to-whole’ relations and with the formation of subjectivity – how fragments can be unified into a coherent whole.

The exhibition White Grounds includes a series of new paintings-inprocess and sculptural works, in which she explores the concept of ground through experimentation with texture and the incorporation of found material, printed matter, and debris. This exhibition is realised alongside Mandy El-Sayegh’s exhibition Cite Your Sources at Chisenhale Gallery, London (12 April – 9 June, 2019).

Mandy El-Sayegh lives and works in London, UK. Selected solo exhibitions include: Cite Your Sources, Chisenhale Gallery (London, 2019), The Mistake Room, Guadalajara, Mexico, (2018); Figured Ground: Meshworks , Carl Kostyál, London (2017); Taking Part, Galerie Mihai Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania (2016); this is a sign, Carlos/Ishikawa, London (2016). Selected group exhibitions include: Sharjah Biennial 13: Tamawuj, Sharjah, UAE (2017); and Room Services, New York Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, New York (2016). In 2017 El-Sayegh was shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Mandy El-Sayegh, White Grounds, 2019, exhibition view, Bétonsalon – Centre d’art et de recherche, 2019, Photos: © Aurélien Mole