Diari d’Acqua/Water Diaries
April 18 – November 24, 2024
Lapis Lazuli: artE / Fondazione Barovier & Toso
“I tore everything apart … I grew a lot.”
Alizée Gazeau’s installation Océanicité at Lapis Lazuli: artE presents large canvasses hanging from squared iron structures. Six metres high, 3 times the size of a tall human body.
The canvasses’ surfaces resemble the skin of snakes or dragons. Their reddish tones recall blood, dried up or diluted, somehow lost on the way. The paintings’ technique is characteristic for Gazeau’s practice: the artist places fishing nets on the canvas and imbues it with paint. Once dried, the net is taken away and its imprint remains on the surface.
The layers relate to fossils, time caught in matter, creating a structure, leaving an imprint. Asked about her work, Gazeau quotes Agnes Martin: to go beyond painting. She sees painting as a vector, a portal to different experiences, times, and worlds.
Accordingly, and upon a longer look, the canvasses recall hieroglyphs, frescoes, landscapes, maps. It’s stories to get lost in, caught. The net in this regard leads an ambiguous existence: I, the viewer, am caught by its semi-open structure. For the artist, it represents skin as the first net we are caught by, or held together. Through her work, she becomes a net, catching us, holding us together, and letting us go.
Gazeau describes her practice as battle between control and letting go. While the positioning of the net on the canvas may be deliberately chosen, the artist cannot control the final outcome, the exact shapes and structures, the density of paint. The technique addresses the fear of losing control; just as I, the viewer, might lose control in the paintings’ puzzling presence.
The red colours of the paintings relate to nature and femininity, the artist’s body and again, skin. Something frightening and comforting at the same time. Where faded, the canvasses resemble old parchment, rolled up, lying straight or hanging down.
While formerly stretched, the installation in Venice embraces looseness and the acceptance of flow. For Gazeau, fluidity forms an essential characteristic of the present. The works simultaneously reach out to history and the future, recalling pre- or post-human deserts. They are space-time surfaces, creating an intense present moment. Canvasses containing universes.
[…] each other when the paint is still wet. The image escapes, becomes fleeting. These are negatives, imprints of a past sensibility. Untitled (2025, “s” in the exhibition booklet) shows a body painted on […]