Simone Fattal
12 Oct - 02 Nov 2019
SIMONE FATTAL
With the contribution of Eugénie Paultre
12 October – 9 November 2019
Trouble. Torment. Disorder. Disaster. Terror. Excess. Bursting. Spurting.
And everything else that emerges untouched from an absolute abandonment...: the tasks of our enigmas - which seek themselves out in any form; the dots in our dramas, the signs of our inevitable dispersal - scattered petals swirled by a backward wind. Here where a history of upheaval and collision is written, delicacy serves gesture’s vivacity, seizing our heart to brutally reanimate it.
It’s certainly a state of trance that produces these visions... And what is trance if not the troubling expression of our mysteries finding their way? It deserves to be bluntly unveiled to reveal the background of our lives thrown into a frantic dance of questioning. Deep within us, colored signals confront Darkness - a black magma where brilliance is created. Split in two, our inner theater allows a dialogue between brightness and darkness to pierce through, allowing something to speak, to begin speaking.
A duality, as if to reshape emotion into a simple form: night and day - opacity and transparency - minimal coordinates of mind. Thus, the artist’s innermost nature is stripped bare: a mad stampede, one innate and irreversible movement, towards the void, towards a je ne sais quoi? This is never without crisis: here, we see it with the naked eye, often lurking behind the shimmering surfaces of art works. There, we are face to face with the matrix, with the roaring motor of the artist’s passion. We see with our own eyes what others conceal, secretly nourishing themselves with the blazing fire of life’s madness.
Four cartographies of the soul - unveiled mid-explosion, fusion, effusion - celebrate this immense experience, which consents to being torn apart in unconceivable ways.
Art is also at this price. So, yes, why hide it?
- Eugénie Paultre (translated from French)
Simone Fattal was born in Damascus and grew up in Lebanon. She studied philosophy at the Ecole des Lettres of Beirut and then at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1969 she returned to Beirut and started painting. She participated in numerous shows during the ten years when life in Lebanon was still possible. In 1980, fleeing the Civil War, she settled in California and founded the Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative and experimental literary work. During this period, she also kept up her work as an artist.
A course at the Art Institute of California - San Francisco resulted in the discovery and immediate love of ceramic clay, which she has continued to experiment with, later collaborating over a number of years with master ceramist Hans Spinner at his studio near Grasse in Southern France. Clay was a medium from which simple, timeless forms could emerge and her sculptures all possess a certain characteristic primal force that comes from melding elements of archeology, art history, politics and spirituality.
Simone Fattal’s most recent shows include a major retrospective exhibition at MoMA PS1 in 2019, a solo exhibition at the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2016 and at the Château de Rochechouart Contemporary Art Museum in 2017. Currently, her work is presented at Pinault Foundation’s Punta Della Dogana in Venice. This year, the artist was honored by MoMA on the occasion of its annual Gala.
Eugénie Paultre was born in Paris in 1979. After studying and teaching philosophy, she concentrates on painting, writing and film editing.
With the contribution of Eugénie Paultre
12 October – 9 November 2019
Trouble. Torment. Disorder. Disaster. Terror. Excess. Bursting. Spurting.
And everything else that emerges untouched from an absolute abandonment...: the tasks of our enigmas - which seek themselves out in any form; the dots in our dramas, the signs of our inevitable dispersal - scattered petals swirled by a backward wind. Here where a history of upheaval and collision is written, delicacy serves gesture’s vivacity, seizing our heart to brutally reanimate it.
It’s certainly a state of trance that produces these visions... And what is trance if not the troubling expression of our mysteries finding their way? It deserves to be bluntly unveiled to reveal the background of our lives thrown into a frantic dance of questioning. Deep within us, colored signals confront Darkness - a black magma where brilliance is created. Split in two, our inner theater allows a dialogue between brightness and darkness to pierce through, allowing something to speak, to begin speaking.
A duality, as if to reshape emotion into a simple form: night and day - opacity and transparency - minimal coordinates of mind. Thus, the artist’s innermost nature is stripped bare: a mad stampede, one innate and irreversible movement, towards the void, towards a je ne sais quoi? This is never without crisis: here, we see it with the naked eye, often lurking behind the shimmering surfaces of art works. There, we are face to face with the matrix, with the roaring motor of the artist’s passion. We see with our own eyes what others conceal, secretly nourishing themselves with the blazing fire of life’s madness.
Four cartographies of the soul - unveiled mid-explosion, fusion, effusion - celebrate this immense experience, which consents to being torn apart in unconceivable ways.
Art is also at this price. So, yes, why hide it?
- Eugénie Paultre (translated from French)
Simone Fattal was born in Damascus and grew up in Lebanon. She studied philosophy at the Ecole des Lettres of Beirut and then at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1969 she returned to Beirut and started painting. She participated in numerous shows during the ten years when life in Lebanon was still possible. In 1980, fleeing the Civil War, she settled in California and founded the Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative and experimental literary work. During this period, she also kept up her work as an artist.
A course at the Art Institute of California - San Francisco resulted in the discovery and immediate love of ceramic clay, which she has continued to experiment with, later collaborating over a number of years with master ceramist Hans Spinner at his studio near Grasse in Southern France. Clay was a medium from which simple, timeless forms could emerge and her sculptures all possess a certain characteristic primal force that comes from melding elements of archeology, art history, politics and spirituality.
Simone Fattal’s most recent shows include a major retrospective exhibition at MoMA PS1 in 2019, a solo exhibition at the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2016 and at the Château de Rochechouart Contemporary Art Museum in 2017. Currently, her work is presented at Pinault Foundation’s Punta Della Dogana in Venice. This year, the artist was honored by MoMA on the occasion of its annual Gala.
Eugénie Paultre was born in Paris in 1979. After studying and teaching philosophy, she concentrates on painting, writing and film editing.