Artists: Nils Alix-Tabeling & Motoko Ishibashi
Exhibition title: Séraphîta
Curated by: Christina Gigliotti
Venue: Polansky Gallery, Prague, The Czech Republic
Date: November 8 – December 22, 2018
Photography: Jan Kolsky / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Polansky Gallery, Prague
Séraphîta always has insects caught in her hair
tendrils, tentacles
twisting branches, spreading fingers into black sand
She scuttles, she folds herself over
blue-blooded, with a second skin
exo
two hairy legs
a long dorsal fin and spout
retractable claws
roots that cling and burrow
She inhales
we try to destroy
She exhales
what we cannot possess
Nils Alix-Tabeling’s (b. 1991 in Paris, lives and works in Brussels) practice encompasses sound installation, film, sculpture and performance. The bodies depicted in his sculptures move between different genetic iterations of what a body can be – expressing the potentialities of becoming. The mutability of form suggests the mutability of identity and the dissolution of the limits of the body. These sculptures then become activated by performance and film, props-becoming-characters, given voiceovers and interacted with, eroticised. Recent exhibitions include Somewhere In Between, invited by Komplot at Bozar Brussels, Belgium (2018), Hypersea as part of the Monte Carlo Art Fair, Monaco (2018), Le Bétyle d’Ail, Performance event curated by Komplot, Place du Jardin aux Fleurs in Brussels (2018), Absolute Eructance (with Charlie Billingham) at Damien and the Love Guru in Brussels (2017), and Paris Internationale art fair with Gianni Manhattan (2017).
Motoko Ishibashi (b. 1987 in Nagasaki, lives and works in London) received an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London in 2015. The subjects of her paintings, whether based on human, nature, technology, or a combination of each, are often peeled back to reveal the enigmatic and spectacular universes they carry within them. Recent solo exhibitions include écrin at La Plage in Paris (2017), and Guru Den at Bosse & Baum in London (2017). She has recently exhibited her work in group exhibitions at Unit 17 in Vancouver, CA (2018), Fig. in Tokyo, JP (2018), Foothold in Polignano a Mare, IT (2017), and the 14th Biennale de Lyon, FR (2017).
