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TABLEAU.
JANE SIMPSON.
19
November - 23 January
Tableau
refers to tableaux vivants, or "living pictures",
a custom dating back to ancient times and one
that spread until the beginnings of the last century.
As occurs in these hybrid representations, lying
somewhere between the theatrical and the pictorial,
Jane Simpson has created a setting in CAC Málaga
in which immobile and frozen objects exhale restrained
life and emotion.
In
the exhibition, Jane Simpson explores the relationship
between objects and memory, a concept that on
occasions is deliberately confused with nostalgia.
In this sense and within the artist's exploration
of the world of her materials, ice is revealed
as a highly eloquent element about the passing
of time and possesses, like the work of Simpson,
contradictory traits: vulnerable and destructive,
delicate and resistant, ephemeral and impenetrable.
Ice
covers the hanging chandelier, the tables titled
Ice Table (1996-2004) and Ice Storm (2003), the
sculpture Tivoli (2004) and it is the main subject
of the group of photographs called In Between
(freezing and melting) lies passion 1-6 (2004)
Contradictions
and Still Lifes
Simpson's
obsession with the expressive and sensory abilities
of her materials is expressed in the exhibition
by the work entitled Virgin Queen (2004), a very
comfortable luxurious Chesterfield sofa on which,
however, it is forbidden to sit. The voluptuousness
and impregnability of the object contrast with
the sobriety of the Tivoli cement, a type of lovers'
bench on which one is allowed to sit, although
with the inconvenience of a refrigerated backrest
covered in frost.
Finally,
another highlight of the exhibition is a set of
shelves upon which Jane Simpson has created, using
a wide range of materials, a series of still lifes
inspired by the work of the Italian painter Giorgio
Morandi. On each of the shelves, the artist has
placed, in the style of a family portrait, a series
of objects evoking and claiming the full importance
of all that is intimate, domestic and close.
Young
British Artist
Jane
Simpson's work first became known in the now-celebrated
exhibition Sensation in the early 1990s which
brought together the work of the so-called YBA's
(Young British Artists). However, in contrast
to the work of her fellow artists, Simpson's art
has avoided controversy and immediate effect to
focus, as she explains, on humble and at first
sight worthless objects.
For
this reason her work focuses on objects from the
domestic realm such as tables, chairs, lamps and
pictures, treated as relics to evoke the person
who used them. As Simpson says: "when I go
to junk markets I always ask myself how things
ended up there. These are things from people's
lives. They may simply have been thrown away,
but there might also have been more tragic reasons.
What I am really dealing with is nostalgia".
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