Caroline Mesquita
The Ballad
23 Jan - 11 Mar 2017
Exhibition view © Rebecca Fanuele / Fondation d’entreprise Ricard
Exhibition view © Rebecca Fanuele / Fondation d’entreprise Ricard
Exhibition view © Rebecca Fanuele / Fondation d’entreprise Ricard
Exhibition view © Rebecca Fanuele / Fondation d’entreprise Ricard
Caroline Mesquita, "The Mechanic" and "The Teenager" © Rebecca Fanuele / Fondation d’entreprise Ricard
Caroline Mesquita, "The Mechanic" (2017) © Rebecca Fanuele / Fondation d’entreprise Ricard
Exhibition view © Rebecca Fanuele / Fondation d’entreprise Ricard
Caroline Mesquita, "The Plane Sidewall", "The Red-dressed Woman" and "The Berliner" (2017) © Rebecca Fanuele / Fondation d’entreprise Ricard
Caroline Mesquita, "The Wing Tip", "The Pyjama Man" and "The Peasant" (2017) © Rebecca Fanuele / Fondation d’entreprise Ricard
CAROLINE MESQUITA
The Ballad
23 January - 11 March 2017
Curated by Martha Kirszenbaum.
Fondation d'entreprise Ricard is pleased to announce the solo show of Caroline Mesquita, The Ballad.
Caroline Mesquita’s sculptural practice intertwines the materiality of her altered, oxidized, and painted copper and brass sheets with theatrical playfulness. Her metallurgic experiments result in life-size figures, interacting with each other in a mise en scène crafted from the sculpted sheets and forming an environment of coated steel. For the exhibition The Ballad, presented at Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Mesquita produced a series of twelve sculpted characters interacting and facing each other or the viewer as their presence blurs the line between fiction and reality, humans and mannequins. It is a procession, a form of public celebration, a moment of communion.
There is a distinctive boldness in Caroline Mesquita’s gesture and approach to the material and the object as she transforms rough pieces of metal into a sophisticated ensemble of colored sculptures forming a joyful parade of dancing souls. The structure of the exhibition parcours is framed by large pieces of dark gray steel, evoking a sidewalk, a wing and jet engines of a dislocated plane, as if it had crashed in a faraway desert zone, providing the metal characters—perhaps the plane’s passengers—a backdrop or playground made of its leftover fragments. In the video produced for the exhibition and untitled The Ballad (2017), Mesquita appears alongside her sculptures and the interaction she creates pushes the limits and reinvents ways of living together. Masquerading as a myriad of characters with diverse costumes and makeup experimentation, whether personifying a pilot officer, a teenager with braces, or an elegant Gothic woman, she seems to challenge our understanding of identity construction and representation, oscillating between tenderness and violence, love and vice. As her sculptures cuddle and caress her, then attack and wound her, the soundscape of the video—metallic jingling and clinking—gives the impression of a deliciously perverse carnival.
Martha Kirszenbaum, january 2017
* A second opus of the project will open at 221A in Vancouver in April 2017.
Caroline Mesquita (born in 1989 in Brest, France) lives and works in Paris, where she graduated from École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 2013. Solo exhibitions include Pink everywhere, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany; Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, Scotland; Les Bains-Douches, Alençon, France, 2014, and 1m3, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2013. Group exhibitions include Europe, Europe, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway 2014; The Space Between Us, Fahrenheit, Los Angeles, 2014; Memory Palaces, Carlier-Gebauer, Berlin, 2014; La Vie Matérielle, 15ème Prix Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris, 2013; and Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market, Monnaie de Paris, Paris, 2012. Mesquita also attended the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles in the spring of 2014.
The Ballad
23 January - 11 March 2017
Curated by Martha Kirszenbaum.
Fondation d'entreprise Ricard is pleased to announce the solo show of Caroline Mesquita, The Ballad.
Caroline Mesquita’s sculptural practice intertwines the materiality of her altered, oxidized, and painted copper and brass sheets with theatrical playfulness. Her metallurgic experiments result in life-size figures, interacting with each other in a mise en scène crafted from the sculpted sheets and forming an environment of coated steel. For the exhibition The Ballad, presented at Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Mesquita produced a series of twelve sculpted characters interacting and facing each other or the viewer as their presence blurs the line between fiction and reality, humans and mannequins. It is a procession, a form of public celebration, a moment of communion.
There is a distinctive boldness in Caroline Mesquita’s gesture and approach to the material and the object as she transforms rough pieces of metal into a sophisticated ensemble of colored sculptures forming a joyful parade of dancing souls. The structure of the exhibition parcours is framed by large pieces of dark gray steel, evoking a sidewalk, a wing and jet engines of a dislocated plane, as if it had crashed in a faraway desert zone, providing the metal characters—perhaps the plane’s passengers—a backdrop or playground made of its leftover fragments. In the video produced for the exhibition and untitled The Ballad (2017), Mesquita appears alongside her sculptures and the interaction she creates pushes the limits and reinvents ways of living together. Masquerading as a myriad of characters with diverse costumes and makeup experimentation, whether personifying a pilot officer, a teenager with braces, or an elegant Gothic woman, she seems to challenge our understanding of identity construction and representation, oscillating between tenderness and violence, love and vice. As her sculptures cuddle and caress her, then attack and wound her, the soundscape of the video—metallic jingling and clinking—gives the impression of a deliciously perverse carnival.
Martha Kirszenbaum, january 2017
* A second opus of the project will open at 221A in Vancouver in April 2017.
Caroline Mesquita (born in 1989 in Brest, France) lives and works in Paris, where she graduated from École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 2013. Solo exhibitions include Pink everywhere, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany; Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, Scotland; Les Bains-Douches, Alençon, France, 2014, and 1m3, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2013. Group exhibitions include Europe, Europe, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway 2014; The Space Between Us, Fahrenheit, Los Angeles, 2014; Memory Palaces, Carlier-Gebauer, Berlin, 2014; La Vie Matérielle, 15ème Prix Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris, 2013; and Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market, Monnaie de Paris, Paris, 2012. Mesquita also attended the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles in the spring of 2014.