Art has always reflected the interconnectivity of space and time. Had it lost the time constraint, be it anything, an art, sculpture, or photograph, it would have lost its depth of sensibility. Marguerite Humeau, one such artist who solely revolved her artworks around this motive, marks her first solo exhibition in Asia. The event started on June 7 and will remain until August 17 2024 at White Cube 6, Dosan-daero, 45-gil, Seoul, South Korea.
Consisting of sculpture, photography, and artwork, the exhibition presents the ‘DUST ‘ collection by visualizing the unseen natural forces involved in the mechanics of space and time. The key protagonist in an operatic milieu is the animating dust, which is often overlooked. It is the artist who took this overlooked matter to imbue it with a meaning- a symbol of interconnected forces of life and death, and carrier of the multitudinous temporalities.
In 2023, the artist displayed her major land artwork ‘Orisons’ which was a single 160-acre fallow crop circle in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. The exhibition website describes it as,
“In so doing, ‘Orisons’ situates one artist’s concerns within the greater scheme of the persistence and resilience of life, between the rolling sand dunes driven by a consistent eastward wind, the drama of the horizon and expansive open sky, the remains of animal bones and nomadic weeds. In recognition of this unique site teeming with life and layered histories, Humeau sought to devise an ephemeral artistic intervention that would at the same time celebrate the land as artwork in and of itself.”
The word ‘Orisons’ is the ancient word for prayer, which is why the artist created sculptural, divination instruments informed by the native wildlife as a gesture of reparation between humans and land. As of ‘DUST’ the artist created a series of intricate sculptures that visualize the activation points of ‘Orisons’ as the spacetime portal.
Combining an array of materials including copper wire, bronze, glass, unglazed terracotta, onyx, and organza, the complex history of ‘Orisons’ takes the form of three-dimension through the ‘DUST’ collection. The White Cube further describes the meaning behind the exhibition’s selected pieces,
“Works such as release of gravity, extraction pipes, the twist and the guardian of Earth migrations (all 2024) describe this with sweeping curves and ascending coils, and tumid, clustered threads suggestive of roiling masses of energy. Funnelling upwards in cyclonic formation, their forms invoke the scientific modelling of elemental forces, as well as art historical depictions of the spiritual.”
The exhibition showcases various works: Cattleguard (2024), The Disappearance of the Bird (2024), and Dead Skins (2024). These sculptures are presented in the Seoul Gallery on iridescent steel structures treated with zinc passivation. A suite of works on the paper further engages with the whirling and centrifugal energies through different layers of the watered down-pigments. Titled ‘a circular landscape as an access to the nets of spacetime,’ this series of paperwork offers a deep look at the visualized unseen presences of the artist. With a diverse technique of image-making, the artist doesn’t even leave the spirit of photography or automatic drawing.
The exhibition concludes with photographs taken by Julia Andréone and Florine Bonaventure at ‘Orisons’ during the artist’s stay, some enlarged, some smaller. A wholesome and creative show, it is a must-visit in Seoul. The art on display is filled with inventiveness through science and nature.
Resource.
Featured Image: Installation View of Marguerite Humeau’s Solo Exhibition at White Cube, Seoul; White Cube.
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