Amigxx
Fernando de la Rocque & Catherine Rebois
Opening on Thursday 17 May 2018, at 6 pm in the presence of the artists
Exhibition until 30 June 2018
For the first time in Geneva, Amigxx exhibits the works of Fernando de la Rocque and Catherine Rebois, around a reflection on identity.
Catherine Rebois recorded the process of a person’s metamorphosis with her new series, Stubbornness - 7 images, 70x70 cm, B&W, Silver prints on barium paper - In this new photographic work, Catherine Rebois refers to the experience as a re-knowledge.
By an act that today seems banal, Catherine Rebois tries to transcribe how the question of identity is paramount. It questions both the image, but also uses a certain photographic potential. The image has trouble defining itself, the environment appears then becomes cloudy, there is nothing stable, nothing resolved. It is the experience that leads, possibly constructed or deconstructed. It is a fragmentary grasp and an exaltation of the search for meaning. The question remains until we are “strangers to ourselves”, as Julia Kristeva puts it, because the strangeness is not elsewhere but in us. It is a matter of being attentive to the other who slumbers by slipping us between presence and absence.
Fernando de la Rocque uses embroidery, painting and drawing to present his sensual, organic and joyful agglomerations and combinations. For Amigxx, the artist made his first embroidered rug which is his largest embroidery ever, as well as new designs on cotton paper. With 240 x 170 cm, the ecru-coloured Indian kilim gained 2.5 km of red wool to compose the piece «Tree life». Fernando embroidered every day at 7am, for 3 months to design his masterpiece.
According to Henry Allsopp (Philips de Pury auctioneer): “Fernando de La Rocque’s series of drawings, sculptures, accumulated objects, videos and mixed media seek to restructure our notion of contemporary urban art through a variety of forms. He is continually drawn to explore forbidden subjects, and ways to subvert them; his erotic drawings have been applied to many media, from tiles to tea sets to clothing. By pairing traditionally controversial subject matter with such innocuous materials, he provokes discomfort, certainly – but also humour."