Fondazione Sozzani to open expo at Paris 22 Marx Dormoy

10 Oct '19

3 min read

Pic: Fondazione Sozzani

Fondazione Sozzani will host an expo in Paris at 22 Rue Marx Dormoy. Established in 2016, Fondazione Sozzani is dedicated to the promotion of culture through photography, art, design and fashion. The foundation has assumed the patronage of galleria Carla Sozzani and continues all of the public functions that the galleria has supported for the past 29 years.

While keeping intact its historic gallery in Milano and the hosting of exhibitions, book presentations, talks, and cultural events, Fondazione Sozzani will expand its energies in a new atmosphere; a 10,000 square feet industrial 19th century building in a vibrant neighbourhood close to the ‘Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord’, at 22 Rue Marx Dormoy, Paris. Creation Language, an installation piece by American artist Kris Ruhs will be the first exhibition at 22 Marx Dormoy. Ruhs’ work was the inaugural show in Milano’s Galleria Carla Sozzani in 1990, according to a press release by the foundation.

At the heart of Kris Ruhs’ work, there is an absolute necessity that we be engaged in his process. In his latest personal exploration, Creation Language, the three-dimensional pieces are themselves a presence, an essence, the physical residue of a past into which we must enter if we are to fully experience it. By first passing through a 9 feet entrance into a space 15x30 feet wide and 9 feet high. With oil painted paper and metal canvases hung on all the surrounding walls, the impact of the images create a visual cacophony. Once inside, we enter through another canvas 9x 9 feet. And then into a 30x15 feet elliptical light wall composed of a multitude of seemingly transparent three-dimensional elements in oil painted paper.

The exhibition Creation Language presents in these canvases one of Ruhs’ major avenues of exploration - the activation of the space between the surface of his works, and what we think we see. We discern that what once was whole, has been chopped into segments. Pieces that had been flung into space, now are collected and reconfigured across this expanse in an attempt to reconstitute the language. It is in the opportunity to read that we are left to navigate. The eye does clearly and completely absorb, in the instant of visual engagement, the totality of what is in front of us. The intellect must absorb both the surface and the multiplicity of substances employed to bring the creation into focus. Whether carved in wood, forged in iron, or carried on hundreds of pieces of paper, the use of multiples of shapes is a signature Ruhs often uses to mark the process of time.

Creation Language pushes beyond the single image and its internal relationships into the more complex dynamics of hundreds of similar pieces of hand cut and painted paper that seem to demand of us a level of communication beyond its own specific presence. The visceral presence of these hundreds of pieces, now shattered, push us closer to the artist’s language, and his process of creation.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (GK)

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