Lago Algo Cultural Center
https://www.lago-algo.mx/#home
LagoAlgo brings together five artists whose works intersect in a journey through time, from a Prehistoric age to the Big History of today and tomorrow. Raising multiple points of view on time, this fourth chapter of exhibitions at LagoAlgo brings forward a transhistorical voyage through the past, the present and the future. Historia naturally reunites independent but conceptually interconnected projects by five international artists, Abdelkader Benchamma (France, 1975), Simon Fujiwara (UK, 1982), Sabino Guisu (Mexico, 1986), Caleb Hahne Quintana (USA, 1993) and Guido van der Werve (Netherlands, 1977).
At a time of unprecedented global turmoil and uncertainties regarding the future, the notion of History takes on a primordial stance as a need to reconnect with nature and culture becomes crucial to approach the times ahead. While boundaries between the geological and the cultural are increasingly blurred, humanity’s actions are significantly impacting the planet’s climate, ecosystems and future. Crossing time, from our primitive origins to the hypermodern society of tomorrow, the works of the five artists resonate closely with the increasing anxieties facing our threatened present and future. In doing so, the exhibition acts like a journey through two temporal perspectives: the first, geological and natural, which spans millions of years, and the second, cultural, which traces humanity’s occupation of the world through the history of art. By interconnecting these two approaches, the exhibition stresses on the necessity to study the present as much as the past to better understand and envision the future.
By Jérôme Sans
For his first-ever exhibition in Mexico, Abdelkader Benchamma presents Neither The Sky Nor The Earth, a site-specific installation specially conceived for LagoAlgo. Submerging the viewer into the French artist’s vocabulary, this immersive work shows history through the layers of myths and narratives that compose the world.
A development of his eponymous wall drawing presented at the Sharjah Biennale in 2017, his new installation, Neither The Sky Nor The Earth, takes his drawings Étoiles Blanches Pierre Noires (2022) as a starting point. Presented within a larger body of paint, these graphic works act like the beginning of a story which creates an overflowing installation. Spilling out of the frame, pushing the all-over strategy to its full completion, the drawings stretch and expand into the space, physically occupying it and enveloping all the walls. The artist thus creates an original artwork that extends over the entire area, presenting an entry to immemorial landscapes similar to the caves in which the world’s mythologies were born.
The construction is based on the principle of sedimentation, where layers of history, myths and stories come together to resurface as immutable figures, in a similar fashion to fossils. The shapes that form the core of Abdelkader Benchamma’s practice are reminiscent of the mineral world despite their lightness. They create a peculiar balance between geological strata appearance and the feeling of being swept along in a constant tornado. This oxymoron in his practice generates an unsettling comfort for viewers whose eyes lose all reference points in a constant quest for stability. The notion of time and history being here key to understanding this journey of the human psyche through this metaphorical grotto.
Abdelkader Benchamma’s work presents yet another aspect, an all-encompassing view on what has been and what is to become. Without being a carrier of a direct ecological message, his work can be perceived as a distant echo to the natural catastrophes of tomorrow, his creations having so much in common with devastated landscapes after a natural disaster. All bearings are lost in the face of this destabilizing wave, a feeling translated by the use of the mop and ink over charcoal. Abdelkader Benchama’s drawing lines rush the viewer with an apparent gentleness in a journey back to the original cave.
By Jérôme Sans
Abdelkader Benchamma
Abdelkader Benchamma (France, 1975) is known for his wall painting installations where matter escapes in organic growths from the frame, investing all the space and metamorphosing it in a metaphorical cave. His work is fueled by literature, philosophy, astrophysics and esoteric reflections, resulting in environments and visual scenarios that question our relations with reality, probing the boundaries with the invisible. The French artist’s dreamlike black and white universe surprises by the strength it exalts as much as by the details hidden among the whirlwind of his abstract forms. Every subtlety is well thought out and nothing is lost in the strength of his line. The artist lives and works between Paris and Montpellier.
Source: Lago Algo
