Soleil et Grotte
Group show including the works of Dove Allouche, Mark Geffriaud, Apostolos Georgiou, Chloé Royer and Elené Shatberashvili
gb agency, Paris
June 30 - July 26, 2023
The colors hidden in the geological heart of nature; the balance of a hip resting in space; the objects of memory, between reflections and transparencies; the passage of time, between images stolen from moments of apparent insignificance, to the small objects that accompany our days: three weeks in which the works of Dove Allouche, Mark Geffriaud, Apostolos Georgiou, Chloé Royer and Elené Shatberashvili will occupy gb agency, accompanying the warm light of the summer sun into the gallery.
Exhibition view, Soleil et Grotte, 2023
Exhibition view, Soleil et Grotte, 2023
Apostolos Georgiou, Untitled, 2023
Exhibition view, Soleil et Grotte, 2023
Dove Allouche, Evaporite_15, 2019
Exhibition view, Soleil et Grotte, 2023
Elené Shatberashvili, Deux Aubergines, 2018 / Nature morte au miroir 3, 2023
Exhibition view, Soleil et Grotte, 2023
Apostolos Georgiou, Untitled, 2023
Elené Shatberashvili, Pomme de terre orange, 2023
Exhibition view, Soleil et Grotte, 2023
Mark Geffriaud, 7102, 2017
Mark Geffriaud, Tes mais 6, 2023
Exhibition view, Chloé Royer, Untitled (hips), 2021
Soleil et grotte is gb agency’s 2023 summer show, featuring the work of Dove Allouche (Sarcelles, 1972), Apostolos Georgiou (1952,Thessaloniki), Mark Geffriaud (Vitry sur Seine, 1977), Chloé Royer (1989, Paris), and Elené Shatberashvili (1990,Tbilisi).
Dove Allouche’s Evaporites (Evaporite_15, 2019) are the result of the 2019 commission for which the artist established a dialogue with the materials and history of the Yellow Trianon at the Chateau de Versailles. Realising that the mineral most in use in the Chateau was not precious like gold but the rather modest gypsum found underlaying all the decors, Dove Allouche went to the quarry that originally provided that stone, obtaining from it a series of fine rectangular cuts. A filter was later applied to each of these cuts, unexpectedly revealing a palette of rich colours and textures telling of the richness of a stone that hides in compressed form a geological history of thousands of years that is often ignored. It is the stone itself that was later used as a negative to produce the photographic print.
In the same room,Apostolos Georgiou’s recent works (all Untitled, 2023) dialogue with Elene Shatberashvili’s paintings. Georgiou’s drawings are a depart from the painter’s technique of choice of acrylic on canvas in large formats in which characters are presented in an almost 1:1 scale, producing a direct and peculiar dialogue with the viewer. On the exhibited drawings on paper, Apostolos Georgiou’s characters remain expressive and imposing, even though their scale has shifted. Next to them and interspersed throughout the exhibition, we can find Elené Shatberashvili’s paintings, in which a reflection on scale also operates.The artist always tries to reproduce objects in a scale true to life, only occasionally departing from a figurative representation in which images and objects of memories collide.
Resembling either legs or the structure of some walking device or creature, Chloé Royer’s sculpture (Untitled (hips), 2021) raises in the air and leans against the wall, as if contemplating the space, silently keeping it in balance. Nearby, Mark Geffriaud completes the exhibition with works in which memories are layered in games of transparencies, both bi and tridimensional, as is the case of the sculpture entitled 7102 (2017) in which a battery, an eraser and an hematite stone appear floating in a block of plexiglass, or in the more recent series entitled Tes mais (2023),in which silver nitrate is used to create a surface that is both reflective and transparent, placed over found images.