Fifty-one steel drill bits, enlarged and resized to correspond to different stages of human growth, are carved from black marble. Perfectly machined, the marble causes the drill shanks to range from extreme thinness to dense, heavy thickness.
Erected within the exhibition space, the black marble “forests” are arranged in a large square of paradoxical units—at once compact and scattered, fragile and solid, heterogeneous and cohesive. The smooth, matte black marble lends the work two contradictory qualities: a tactile sensuality and a menacing coldness, as if an erotic form were giving rise to a warlike one.
Black Rain explores issues related to the construction of the self: the individual’s autonomy and their inevitable openness to others, the individual’s participation in the community, and the absorption of both the individual and the community into a process of concentration-camp-style massification…
Black Rain also allows for unusual leaps in art history: from the lifelike drapery of Bernini’s sculptures to the minimalist geometric modules of the 1960s, from ancient columns to the Muslim Kaaba, from Tony Smith’s black cube to Giacometti’s unsettling objects…
production : -- La Criée centre d’art contemporain, Rennes -- Le Plateau Frac Ile-de-France -- galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris
