Dear Shaded viewers,
A need for exploration may be fulfilled this month, if you stroll along “Les Mains Baladeuses” by Tiphaine Calmettes and visit her current exhibition at Galerie Arnaud Deschin .
Aside from le Marais conventions, head North East between Ménilmontant and Père Lachaise, in the middle of a project zone of the Paris 20th arrondissement. The space is tucked on a narrow, long twirling street with the bucolic name of Rue des Cascades. Galerie Arnaud Deschin gives the pulse along a few galleries in this area of Paris which is still resisting gentrification. Arnaud Deschin has a long road of supporting artists from Marseille to Paris, opening various spaces as La GAD to an apartment gallery. He proudly nurtures his image of an art activist and high profile outsider over the past 2 decades, as he follows his good path and continues to open doors and sheds light on numerous artists as he presents here the first solo exhibition of the young French artist Tiphaine Calmettes.
Her show deserves attention and probably more as time goes by… Sculpture pieces made of concrete are covered with growing vegetation, from foam to mushrooms. The pieces are placed sporadically in the gallery, imitating growing urbanisation in random places. The sculpture pieces are reminding of architectural structures shipwrecked on the shores of Normandy since World War II or modern concrete urban elements. Reminiscences of bunkers, wells, mills or power towers, each concrete sculptor is a work in progress. The public can observe what happens when the magic of nature will take over as the mutating pieces covered by vegetation and natural elements will continue to grow and transform by themselves.
Between radical architectural pieces and survival skills, Tiphaine Calmettes links this installation to the poetry of her natural femininity, as she knits grains of beans, hoping for it to grow together, and take new forms of being. Two clay fists inseminated with seeds may also give back to nature the power to take over, as seeding bombs with grains of art empowered by natural elements. An ecological statement anchored in her upbringing and education, finally brings her to tie everything together with a drink made out of a secret herbal mixture you may try to keep your cool… She further pushes ideas of rhizomes and interconnexions, while meeting others artists, critics, and collectors at scheduled diners proposed over the course of the show.
The show is open until October 28th . For more info Please contact Galerie Arnaud Deschin, 18 rue des Cascades 75020 Paris – +33 6 75 67 20 96 –
Géraldine Postel
Paris, September 2017
