Gyan Panchal
08 Sep - 13 Oct 2012
View of the exhibition Ce lien qui nous sépare / This bond that separates us
galerie frank elbaz, Paris, from September 8th to October 13th, 2012
Photo Zarko Vijatovic
galerie frank elbaz, Paris, from September 8th to October 13th, 2012
Photo Zarko Vijatovic
GYAN PANCHAL
This bond that separates us
8 September – 13 October 2012
Perhaps one of the secrets of Gyan Panchal’s work is imagining it out in the world. Imagining its nature as found object not just before it becomes art, but after it becomes art. Imagining that it, or at least certain aspects of it, may, in fact, never become art. That the found, recuperated and minimally modified materials with which Panchal works are nothing more than exactly and irreducibly themselves. Or to put it another way, what if this wasn’t art? Was never touched by the hand of an artist and thereby transformed into art? But was something else, something if not more primitive, then more discovered, more weirdly and deeply appreciated for what it is. What do I mean by that? (For what could be more discovered than art? Other than the discoveries that it allows you to make?)
Imagine, say, a tinkerer sitting in his garage and suddenly growing aware of the rich and manifold material world around him. Seeing, truly, for the first time, such colors and things as silver leaf, cadmium yellow, titanium white, sisal, insulation paper, aluminum, polyurethane, and styrofoam (all the materials of which Panchal’s latest production is composed). Noticing them thus, he becomes compelled to understand them, not necessarily in scientific or symbolic terms, but in more immediate physical and tactile terms, as if their secret, or better yet, their truth, could be found within their texture, or just beneath their surface, in their fibers, in their material being.
For the sake of pursuing this fictive scenario, let us acknowledge that our tinkerer (inevitably, a somewhat Beckettian figure. Inevitably? Solitary and treating artificial materials as if they were a kind of nature, a plausible substitute for it, how could he not be?), like most tinkerers, is slightly unhinged and given to flights of somewhat paranoid fancy. Bewitched by the discoveries he has made, he begins to perceive in them a kind of excess for which he cannot account, but which nevertheless begins in some way to account for him. It is almost as if these materials assumed a life, so to speak, of their own, became beings, individuals in the most understated, yet uncanny way (which might well be the case).
Here, allegory could be said to begin to rear its ugly head. But in order for any real allegory to happen, these materials would have to be in the service of something else, functioning as a means to an end, as opposed to ends in themselves, which is what they become in Panchal’s work. Honing in on their essential qualities, Panchal could be said to dress their nudity before giving them back to the world in the fullness of their natural contradiction, as austere as they are excessive and precise as they are ultimately opulent.
Chris Sharp
Born in 1973 in France. Lives and works in Paris, France.
Exhibitions (selection): 2012 : Shanghai Bienniale, Mumbai Pavilion, Shanghai (D. Campbell, S. Hapgood); Les Prairies, Biennale d’art contemporain, Rennes (A. Bonnin); Archéologies contemporaines, Musée du château des ducs de Wurtemberg, Montbéliard (A. Voltz); Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai (solo); 2011: Pour un art pauvre, Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes (F. Cohen); Paris-Delhi-Bombay..., Centre Pompidou, Paris (F. Bousteau et S. Duplaix); 2009 : « the brick says : I like an arch », Le SPOT, Le Havre (solo); 2008 : Cairn, Module Palais de Tokyo, Paris (solo); Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers; La Consistance du visible, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris.
This bond that separates us
8 September – 13 October 2012
Perhaps one of the secrets of Gyan Panchal’s work is imagining it out in the world. Imagining its nature as found object not just before it becomes art, but after it becomes art. Imagining that it, or at least certain aspects of it, may, in fact, never become art. That the found, recuperated and minimally modified materials with which Panchal works are nothing more than exactly and irreducibly themselves. Or to put it another way, what if this wasn’t art? Was never touched by the hand of an artist and thereby transformed into art? But was something else, something if not more primitive, then more discovered, more weirdly and deeply appreciated for what it is. What do I mean by that? (For what could be more discovered than art? Other than the discoveries that it allows you to make?)
Imagine, say, a tinkerer sitting in his garage and suddenly growing aware of the rich and manifold material world around him. Seeing, truly, for the first time, such colors and things as silver leaf, cadmium yellow, titanium white, sisal, insulation paper, aluminum, polyurethane, and styrofoam (all the materials of which Panchal’s latest production is composed). Noticing them thus, he becomes compelled to understand them, not necessarily in scientific or symbolic terms, but in more immediate physical and tactile terms, as if their secret, or better yet, their truth, could be found within their texture, or just beneath their surface, in their fibers, in their material being.
For the sake of pursuing this fictive scenario, let us acknowledge that our tinkerer (inevitably, a somewhat Beckettian figure. Inevitably? Solitary and treating artificial materials as if they were a kind of nature, a plausible substitute for it, how could he not be?), like most tinkerers, is slightly unhinged and given to flights of somewhat paranoid fancy. Bewitched by the discoveries he has made, he begins to perceive in them a kind of excess for which he cannot account, but which nevertheless begins in some way to account for him. It is almost as if these materials assumed a life, so to speak, of their own, became beings, individuals in the most understated, yet uncanny way (which might well be the case).
Here, allegory could be said to begin to rear its ugly head. But in order for any real allegory to happen, these materials would have to be in the service of something else, functioning as a means to an end, as opposed to ends in themselves, which is what they become in Panchal’s work. Honing in on their essential qualities, Panchal could be said to dress their nudity before giving them back to the world in the fullness of their natural contradiction, as austere as they are excessive and precise as they are ultimately opulent.
Chris Sharp
Born in 1973 in France. Lives and works in Paris, France.
Exhibitions (selection): 2012 : Shanghai Bienniale, Mumbai Pavilion, Shanghai (D. Campbell, S. Hapgood); Les Prairies, Biennale d’art contemporain, Rennes (A. Bonnin); Archéologies contemporaines, Musée du château des ducs de Wurtemberg, Montbéliard (A. Voltz); Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai (solo); 2011: Pour un art pauvre, Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes (F. Cohen); Paris-Delhi-Bombay..., Centre Pompidou, Paris (F. Bousteau et S. Duplaix); 2009 : « the brick says : I like an arch », Le SPOT, Le Havre (solo); 2008 : Cairn, Module Palais de Tokyo, Paris (solo); Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers; La Consistance du visible, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris.