L’ÉTRANGER BY DARIO ESCOBAR | CRASH Magazine
ART

L’ÉTRANGER BY DARIO ESCOBAR

By Crash redaction

Discover L’étranger, curated by Dario Escobar, hosted by No Name until 11th January 2023.

Here the artist and curator talks in depth about his motives behind the show and what to expect at the exhibition.

@dario.escobar

THE THREAT OF SAYING MORE THAN WHAT IT IS

By Dario Escobar

In his Afterword for the American edition of “The Stranger”, Albert Camus wrote: The answer is simple: Meursault refuses to lie. Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler. But Meursault, contrary to appearances, doesn’t want to make life simpler. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened.

As a matter of fact, the designation “stranger” is still close to the word “threat”; it is a blurry version of our deep-seated fear of that which is different, but still remains within us. In a society where everything is masked with good intentions and where the ideology of goodwill is widely offered as a detergent able to wash historical stains away from every system, what is the role to be played by contemporary art? Should it act as a mere brochure for political correctness and political indoctrination? Perhaps, the problem most clearly expressed by the dilemma faced by curators, artists, and critics is one of the most provocative premises of all time: Do we need truth or is painting a few inclusion brushstrokes, or writing sentimentally engaged poetry on our Zeitgeist enough?

This selection of artists seeks to disrupt an order established around the meaning of all of those discourses which are accepted only in the belief that if we were to critically shove the system that supports them we would immediately be regarded as strangers, as uncomfortable foreigners who would end up in the same sad condition as Camus’s character did: canceled, judged, and sentenced to death. When they engage in moral commentary, artists always end up in the margins, even if their work is consumed and involved in intellectual exchanges or social cohesion systems; we could say that behind every great artist, there is great dissent.

Putting together an anthology such as the one behind this exhibition implies a risk, but that risk is also what is obviously at stake when showing the work of these artists in a country that has the most extensive history of avant-garde movements in art, philosophy and politics. Let us say that rather than trying to start a revolution in the place where the word was born, this exhibition seeks to find a space where it can display something that may be regarded as the harvest— in times of austerity and drought—of a thought that comes from Outside. Rather than a mere geographical description, this Outside refers to whatever lies beyond everything that has been consolidated as the pure, civilized, and conscious thought of the abstract labor of well-thinking or, rather, to the economy of not having of to respond to the annoying hesitation of those artists who come to Europe from Latin America so they may remain quiet and let someone speak for them.

Let these words be some sort of idea written out loud on the goals, choices and ashes that I would like to emphasize in this selection, provided that I am fully aware of the premises behind the diversity of ways in which we can read a project involving artists with solid international careers and practices with clearly no other interest than providing an individual perspective on an environment that day by day is increasingly becoming a uniform system of victimisms or good intentions.

COURTESIES 

Iñaki Bonillas: Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nordenhake, Mexico City Minerva Cuevas: Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City Jose Dávila: Courtesy of the artist and Travesia Cuatro, Madrid
Dario Escobar: Courtesy of the artist

Alejandra Laviada: Courtesy of the artist and Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain, Paris Anuar Maauad:Courtesy of the artist
Moisés Sacal Hadid: Courtesy of the artist
Héctor Zamora: Courtesy of the artist and LABOR, Mexico City

Photographers: Thomas Lannes and Estudio Dario Escobar

@nonamecreativeproject

 

NO NAME

October 16th 2022 to January 11th 2023

Paris, 75008
by appointment only
leo@marshallfineart.com
+ 33 (0)6 16 56 13 76
+ 33 (0)6 63 13 64 58

Alejandra Laviada
Self Portrait #1, 2022
Foam, polyester resin, glass ber and rope 105 x 74,5 x 77 cm

Anuar Maauad

Bronze and Ashes, 2022
A man’s ego, bronze and ashes 29 x 29 x 10 cm Edition 1/3 + 3 AP

 

Anuar Maauad

We Are Bodies #12, 2022
Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, polyester resin, enamel paint 180,3 x 35,6 x 17,8 cm
Edition 2/3 + AP

 

Minerva Cuevas

Left: Understorm, 2022
Oil on canvas dipped in chapopote 65 x 76 cm

Right: Tide, 2022
Oil on canvas dipped in chapopote 31 x 46 x 2.4 cm

 

Minerva Cuevas

Understorm, 2022
Oil on canvas dipped in chapopote 65 x 76 cm

 

Dario Escobar

Encrypted Messages N°23, 2022 Metal, pigments and gold
137 x 122 x 5 cm

 

Dario Escobar

Quetzalcoatl VI, 2017
Vulcanized rubber, bronze, and stainless steel 265 x 303 x 120 cm

 

Dario Escobar

Red Composition N°21, 2018 Cinnabar pigment and paper 60 x 121 x 4 cm

 

Dario Escobar

Composition N°130, 2020 Motor oil on paper
135 x 96 x 4 cm

 

Héctor Zamora

Bluesy, 2022
Each piece 50,5 x 20 x 13cm Overall 260 x 50 x 13cm Edition 1/2 + 1AP

 

Iñaki Bonillas

Marginalia 5, 2019
Pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, Ultra Smooth 305 gr Paper
142 x 118 cm
Framed: 145.8 x 120.7 x 4.5 cm
Edition 3/3 + 1 AP

 

Jose Dávila

The most famous problem in the history of mathematics is that of squaring the circle, 2019
Vinyl paint on loomstate linen
Overall 260 x 300 x 6 cm

Minerva Cuevas

Empire, 2022
Aluminum can and artificial flowers 62.2 x 43.2 x 33 cm

 

Minerva Cuevas

Shell Group, 2022
Set of 3. Aluminum can and arti cial owers Shell 44 x 38 x 26 cm
Falcon: 28 x 13 x 14 cm
Ell-Bee Lubes: 43 x 32 x 29 cm

 

Moisés Sacal Hadid

M.D.T.F.S.F.O. (módulos de tergiversación forzada sobre fenómenos orgánicos), 2022
Microphone, speaker, ampli er, steel wire
5 modules, each 5 x 28 x 5cm

Variable overall dimensions

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This