longing, ongoing, 2023
Sheets of glass partially covered with mirror spray, digital printed photos and scans, asphalt, effect films, epoxy resin, masons rope
Varying sizes
Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux
Exhibition at KOMMET art space, Lyon (France)
Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann
Exhibition at KOMMET art space, Lyon (France)
from March 3rd to April 29th 2023
Curation
Émilie d’Ornano and Livia Tarsia in Curia
Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux
For this new exhibition, KOMMET had the pleasure to partner with the an• other here nomadic residency program. Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux is the fragmentary reproduction of the landscape of Montbrun-les-Bains. Through sculpture, installation or photography, Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann reveal the results of their research generated on this territory and transcribe the visible and invisible contours of this bucolic environment in the art centre.
Since Antiquity, the village of Montbrun-les-Bains has been known for its sulphurous water. Used for spa treatments, this water relieves rheumatism and treats respiratory ailments. Dounia Chemsseddoha partly explores this facet of the territory by evoking water, a rare and precious resource. At KOMMET, she fictionalises a parallel world and invites the spectators to an exploration of the underground cavern of this village. Receptacles for potentially curative floral waters are scattered throughout this “cave”. Thus, visitors are invited on a journey where it is possible to awaken their senses. The litany of the hills broadcasts reminiscences recorded during the residency. We then discover the ancestral richness of medicinal plants and learn about their virtues, at times esoteric.
Meanwhile Lisa Hoffmann looks, observes and examines to detect a completely different reality, often concealed. In the exhibition space she sows the clues of a crossing, that of a happy encounter with the territory of Montbrun-les-Bains. After having carried out oral and visual collection work, she imitates certain traces and experiences of what the landscape and the inhabitants, humans, animals, plants and minerals, have been able to tell her. Lisa Hoffmann questions the perception and objective representation of this changing landscape. Ultimately, how to contemplate it while acting on its preservation? At KOMMET, the impalpable nature finds itself enclosed between sheets of glass. Although kept at a distance, it is subject to the analysis of samples under the microscope by visiting scientists. Ghostly hands, accompanied by different optical games, direct the gaze of visitors and stimulate different points of view on the exhibition from the inside, but also from outside the art centre.
Between the two of them, the artists take and select fragments of the Drôme landscape which come to hybridise and contaminate the urban environment. After the exploration and this intense period of excavation at Montbrun-les-Bains, Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann intertwine fabrications and reconstructed memories at KOMMET. The exhibition space becomes the venue for two stories destined to be surveyed and shared.
Émilie d’Ornano
Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux
For this new exhibition, KOMMET had the pleasure to partner with the an• other here nomadic residency program. Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux is the fragmentary reproduction of the landscape of Montbrun-les-Bains. Through sculpture, installation or photography, Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann reveal the results of their research generated on this territory and transcribe the visible and invisible contours of this bucolic environment in the art centre.
Since Antiquity, the village of Montbrun-les-Bains has been known for its sulphurous water. Used for spa treatments, this water relieves rheumatism and treats respiratory ailments. Dounia Chemsseddoha partly explores this facet of the territory by evoking water, a rare and precious resource. At KOMMET, she fictionalises a parallel world and invites the spectators to an exploration of the underground cavern of this village. Receptacles for potentially curative floral waters are scattered throughout this “cave”. Thus, visitors are invited on a journey where it is possible to awaken their senses. The litany of the hills broadcasts reminiscences recorded during the residency. We then discover the ancestral richness of medicinal plants and learn about their virtues, at times esoteric.
Meanwhile Lisa Hoffmann looks, observes and examines to detect a completely different reality, often concealed. In the exhibition space she sows the clues of a crossing, that of a happy encounter with the territory of Montbrun-les-Bains. After having carried out oral and visual collection work, she imitates certain traces and experiences of what the landscape and the inhabitants, humans, animals, plants and minerals, have been able to tell her. Lisa Hoffmann questions the perception and objective representation of this changing landscape. Ultimately, how to contemplate it while acting on its preservation? At KOMMET, the impalpable nature finds itself enclosed between sheets of glass. Although kept at a distance, it is subject to the analysis of samples under the microscope by visiting scientists. Ghostly hands, accompanied by different optical games, direct the gaze of visitors and stimulate different points of view on the exhibition from the inside, but also from outside the art centre.
Between the two of them, the artists take and select fragments of the Drôme landscape which come to hybridise and contaminate the urban environment. After the exploration and this intense period of excavation at Montbrun-les-Bains, Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann intertwine fabrications and reconstructed memories at KOMMET. The exhibition space becomes the venue for two stories destined to be surveyed and shared.
Émilie d’Ornano
For this new exhibition, KOMMET had the pleasure to partner with the an• other here nomadic residency program. Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux is the fragmentary reproduction of the landscape of Montbrun-les-Bains. Through sculpture, installation or photography, Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann reveal the results of their research generated on this territory and transcribe the visible and invisible contours of this bucolic environment in the art centre.
Since Antiquity, the village of Montbrun-les-Bains has been known for its sulphurous water. Used for spa treatments, this water relieves rheumatism and treats respiratory ailments. Dounia Chemsseddoha partly explores this facet of the territory by evoking water, a rare and precious resource. At KOMMET, she fictionalises a parallel world and invites the spectators to an exploration of the underground cavern of this village. Receptacles for potentially curative floral waters are scattered throughout this “cave”. Thus, visitors are invited on a journey where it is possible to awaken their senses. The litany of the hills broadcasts reminiscences recorded during the residency. We then discover the ancestral richness of medicinal plants and learn about their virtues, at times esoteric.
Meanwhile Lisa Hoffmann looks, observes and examines to detect a completely different reality, often concealed. In the exhibition space she sows the clues of a crossing, that of a happy encounter with the territory of Montbrun-les-Bains. After having carried out oral and visual collection work, she imitates certain traces and experiences of what the landscape and the inhabitants, humans, animals, plants and minerals, have been able to tell her. Lisa Hoffmann questions the perception and objective representation of this changing landscape. Ultimately, how to contemplate it while acting on its preservation? At KOMMET, the impalpable nature finds itself enclosed between sheets of glass. Although kept at a distance, it is subject to the analysis of samples under the microscope by visiting scientists. Ghostly hands, accompanied by different optical games, direct the gaze of visitors and stimulate different points of view on the exhibition from the inside, but also from outside the art centre.
Between the two of them, the artists take and select fragments of the Drôme landscape which come to hybridise and contaminate the urban environment. After the exploration and this intense period of excavation at Montbrun-les-Bains, Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann intertwine fabrications and reconstructed memories at KOMMET. The exhibition space becomes the venue for two stories destined to be surveyed and shared.
Émilie d’Ornano
les gros cailloux et les mini comètes, 2023
Asphalt, glass, construction foam, digital prints on film
Varying sizes
cartes de tendresses, 2023
Epoxy resin, goat droppings, acorns
3 x 5 x 4,5 cm
In reference to Albrecht Dürer's "Das große Rasenstück" (1503), which is said to be one of the first realistic natural studies in Art History, the work is a reflection on the human, photographic and scientific gaze. Several materials collected in, and thus representing, a specific environment, are stapled in-between glass plates. This fragile assemblage is completed by lenses and copies of the natural materials in epoxy.
ein kleines Rasenstück, 2023
Asphalt, glass, expanding foam, digital print on film, materials found at Montbrun, lens
37 x 59 x 54 cm
Exhibition in partnership with an• other here
an• other here residency – Edition II Montbrun-les-Bains
The nomadic residency program an• other here supports invited art practioners’ research and creation. It acts as an intercessor of creative narratives while taking care to generate synergies with the invested territory.
For its second edition, the residency nestled onto the side of a limestone mountain, near the village of Montbrun-les-Bains. During the Autumn of 2022, the selected artists Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann gleaned the mysteries of the territory from the Tulicasi family home. Simultaneously a space for living, researching, producing and welcoming the public, this landmark has constituted a platform for branching encounters. It allowed the exploration of an environment inhabited by dissident figures and practices intimately linked to this space surrounded by a natural framework. Walking, pastoralism, ceramics, geology, herbalist farming, olfactotherapy or even foraging have been the common themes within each artistic process.
The distance from urban frenzy has given the artists a more precise, slower, fragmented apprehension of the natural context, bringing out the fragile and intangible of the surrounding landscape. An idea was then shaped, not opposite or alongside, but within.
The dual notion of absence-presence was summoned in the creative process of the two artists, demonstrating that what cannot be seen is not necessarily non-existent or immaterial. Justifiably Dounia Chemsseddoha uses intervision - a keystone in her work - the result of a process allowing to form an alliance with the invisible. She strengthened this approach through ceramics, which matured throughout her residency coming into contact with an artisan ceramist from Montbrun-les-Bains. Hybrid pieces with healing potential emerged, bodily vases and corolla receptacles that could hold healing elixirs. Meanwhile Lisa Hoffmann focused her research on the dimension of walking, the prints of humans, animals and plants along with their memory. And its clues, evocative of a hidden reality. Writing and photography were two tools used brightly to open up a rich reflection on our relationship with the landscape, and even incisive to divert the annihilation of the viewer's mind. Challenge, deconstruct, after all raise awareness.
The exhibition Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux conveys the projects carried out during the residency as well as new pieces rendering the two artists’ immersion in the Drôme Provençale area. This second edition of an• other here was enthusiastically supported by the village community of Montbrun-les-Bains, and made way for events organised in close collaboration with the art collective Polynome.
Livia Tarsia In Curia
une pierre capricieuse, 2023
Asphalt, mirror, expanding foam
40 x 40 x 45 cm
