Anri Sala: If and Only If

Galerie Chantal Crousel is pleased to present the fifth solo exhibition by Anri Sala, on view through Saturday, November 24th.

The artist presents two new films, as well as a series of drawings and sculptures.

Each work explores in its own way and with the means of its medium, the impact of a singular action –i.e a manipulation– on an existing situation, composition or object.

Sala’s film If and Only If (2018) will be projected in the main space of the gallery.

Based on Igor Stravinsky’s “Elegy for Solo Viola,” it charts the journey of a snail gradually travelling the full length of a viola bow. The snail’s location and pace compel the viola player to compose with it, resulting in a tactile interaction between the renowned violist Gérard Caussé and the garden snail.

Sala’s latest film Slip of the Line (2018) oscillates between the magic of work and the work of magic. Located in a glass manufacture, the film follows the transition of the amorphous matter from its molten state to a wine glass. The meticulous choreography of their interrelated actions grants the craftsmen’s labour an hypnotic allure. As the making of the glasses takes us through the different stages of their fabrication, the customary production cycle is hijacked by an unusual slip: the intervention of a magician who bends the wine glasses, bestowing upon the assembly line the traits of an enchanted realm.

Three unique glass objects—Resting Spells (2018)—absorbed by the magic intervention thus taken away from the production process, will be exhibited by the entrance of the gallery, as frozen witnesses of this singular action.  

A series of works on paper Untitled (Maps/Species) (2018) will be on display in the adjacent wooden floor room, showing manipulated maps of countries and geopolitical territories. These mutated representations of land mass fit the boundaries of the found XVIII century etchings of biological species, whose shapes were often constrained within the arbitrary frame in order to facilitate classification.

For this exhibition, visitors are invited to enter the gallery from 5, rue de Saintonge, 75003.

Born in 1974, educated in Albania and France, Anri Sala lives and works in Berlin. Since the 1990’s, Anri Sala has been working in a range of media including video, photography, installation, and more recently drawings and sculptures. His work explores the boundaries between image and sound in order to generate carefully assembled time-based moments which overlap one another. Through a new form of language, his work opens to multiple perspectives and interpretations, bringing together the past, present and future. According prominence to light, sound and space design, Anri Sala’s work is often presented in immersive spaces, thus stimulating our senses and creating a link between the body and the architecture.

Recent shows include Kaldor Public Art Projects in Sydney, Australia (2017); Tamayo Museum in Mexico (2017); the 57th Venice Biennale - Arsenale, Venice, Italy (2017); New Museum, New York, USA (2016); Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2014); Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, USA (2014); The Helena Rubinstein Pavillon for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2014); Palazzo Grassi Teatrino, Venice, Italy (2013); CAC Malaga, Malaga, Spain (2013); French Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2013); Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France (2012); National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan (2011); Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, USA (2008); De Pont museum of contemporary art, Tilburg, Netherlands (2008); XXVe Biennale d’art contemporain, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2002).

His work is on view at the Garage, Moscow, Russia since September 2018, and will be shown at the Castello di Rivoli Turin, Italy in January 2019.