This new exhibition by Iván Argote at Perrotin Paris is conceived like an essay composed of sculptures, texts, photographs, illustrations and films in which the artist proposes a poetic, sociological and political discussion on our relationship with history and our relationship with “the other”.
To stimulate our reflection, Argote transports us to two cities that are diametrically opposite to one another: Neiva in Colombia and Palembang in Indonesia. Exact antipodes are a rare geographical relationship that only six pairs of cities share in the world. The artist produced a film on the subject (“As far as we could get”) that weaves links between the two places and the people who live there, creating a voice that gently but firmly criticizes hegemonic historical narratives. The film revolves around the main axis of decentralizing voice and gaze.
The film appears and disappears throughout the exhibition space as the chapters unfold, thus playing with the lighting and a massive installation that covers a large section of the gallery floor (“About a place”). Dozens of pink concrete slabs, produced one by one in the artist’s studio, are engraved with poems and thoughts. They question the status of the space in which they are arranged, in a way that is at once intimate, ethical and political. They are faced with the sometimes contradictory complexity of a context like that of an exhibition space or more generally a geographical position in the world.
In the series “Skin”, slogans interspersed among different strata of cement create contact between bodily notions and political thinking, in an almost erotic way. In such a way, Argote evokes tenderness, the body and contact as a tool for reflection, a theme also explored in public installations in Cameroon (“Oui ma vie”), or the flyposting campaigns in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico (“Somos Tiernos”), and more recently in Paris (“Tendresse Radicale”).
For more information: https://www.perrotin.com/
photographed by Claire Dorn edited by Tanguy Beurdeley