West, London
Group Exhibition
Serial Recall
NisoHicham Gardaf Ava Binta Gialla Mateo Revillo Loulou Siem Guadalupe Vilar Serial Recall is a collective exhibition gathering the works of five different multidisciplinary artists in an attempt to develop odd and poetic stories of an uncertain time, nestled between spontaneous gestures and deliberate contemplation. Subtly engaging with the space of Niso Gallery, Loulou Siem (UK), Mateo Revillo (Spain), Guadalupe Vilar (Argentina), Ava Binta Giallo (Germany-Guinnea) and Hicham Gardaf (Morocco) created site-specific interventions thinking of memory as an entity in constant metamorphosis, where fiction and reality blur into a vision of History that resists fixity. For Walter Benjamin, memory is the “theatre, the medium of past experience”, but what if it is also the theatre of the present? Approaching these questions phenomenologically, and to a certain extent metaphysically, this exhibition aims to explore the possibilities of traces, whether present or absent, human or artificial, left across time and space. Thought as an excavation of souvenirs of a time that is yet to be lived or relived, this show invites the audience to engage with their own concepts of memory and its correlation to space. In that respect, by intervening directly on the architecture of the gallery, the artists envisioned intuitive installations that eclectically reflect a cohesive understanding of the spatial and temporal context they are in, while still attempting to escape it. In an effort to generate new meanings and flexible truths, these installations seek, in this way, to stand by their own whilst trying to reappropriate settings and circumstances, objects and subjects in synchrony with their own spectrum. While Loulou Siem plays with materials and textures in order to create what could be perceived as unfunctional “artifacts” and other facsimiles, recalling perhaps inner feelings of a vague domestic souvenir that never occurred, Ava Binta Giallo reinterprets traces and left histories by producing ethereal works that combine painting and organic matters. In contrast, Guadalupe Vilar reinvents materials by reusing discarded fabric to build theatrical installations, uncannily anthropomorphic… Very methodical, Mateo Revillo seems to anchor his praxis at the intersection of sculpture, painting, and architecture, projecting a personal reading of his surroundings, inevitably reshaping form and substance. And, as memory and history are reinterpreted in a somewhat absurd archeological way, Hicham Gardaf unlocks with photography and film, forgotten stories of a reality that seems blurrier and blurrier–a flickering flame that resists the tensions of time. Serial Recall aims in this way, to highlight the multiple possibilities of narrating and reading facts and feelings. Visualizing a familiar environment to better remember, all five artists create new memories within a space that is neither familiar nor foreign, initiating an intentional peregrination à la Gaston Bachelard- “the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” The audience is, in this way, led to follow the artists in their phenomenological embrace of the space, inviting all to daydream, remember, forget, and remember over and over again. Exhibition curated by Yasmine Helou in collaboration with Niso Gallery.