Vidya Gastaldon
06/04/2004 > 22/05/2004
Opening on 03/04/2004, from 6 pm to 9 pm
For her first exhibition in France, VIDYA GASTALDON presents the installation Paysage – Rhizome – Œufs (Landscape – Rhizome – Eggs), comprising around thirty 'eggs', different sized wire structures, rhizome like, covered with knitted and sewn wool with different colours. Inspired by microbiology, the structure of each 'egg' consists of a network of links creating a form that is both geometric and organic, evoking the architecture of Buckminster FULLER. These entities evolve between the animal and the vegetable, or more so they express the dream of a hybridisation of these two kingdoms, reaching for the fullness of the kingdom of life. These abstract beings lie on the floor to form 'families', according to affinities recognised by the artist. In this way the works constitute a landscape that is both psychic – a concentration of mental images, and sensual – linked to the visual and tactile qualities of the forms and materials.
Being both a return towards the interior and a projection beyond the self, this strange and poetic universe is marked by the nostalgia for ecological and social utopias of the 1970s. This nostalgia can also be found in the series of drawings lying somewhere between Primitivism and Futurism that are also part of the exhibition, or in the video Bright Vader, an enlightened and mythical animated version of the evil Darth Vader from Star Wars.
VIDYA GASTALDON was born in 1974 in Besançon. She lives and works in Geneva and has exhibited widely, including at the Centre Culturel Suisse (Paris), the Centre d’art contemporain (Geneva), Centre National de la Photographie (Paris) and the CAPC (Bordeaux).