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Guillaume Leblon Under My Shoe

  • Exhibition

  • May 24, 2013 - April 6, 2014
  • Galleries

This first solo exhibition of Paris-based sculptor Guillaume Leblon’s work in a U.S. museum features a selection of works made over the last decade, in addition to two major new projects created for MASS MoCA. Leblon’s practice is characterized both by its diversity and the artist’s canny manipulation of space. While he creates powerful, discrete objects, he often choreographs his works into a larger spatial narrative within his exhibition venues.

Incorporating familiar objects into his sculptures, from tables to shelves, plywood, even the sails of a windmill, Leblon presents enigmatic constructions and combinations which have a powerful, seductive, material presence. While his works refuse a single reading, they often conjure images of the ruin and the passage of time, bringing the present and the past into contact. Leblon can transform everyday components into sculptures that attain a relic-like quality or the aura of a classical statue.

The artist’s interest in transformations has manifested itself in works that hint at a kind of alchemy. In a recent series of sculptures which are propped against the wall, the bright colors of a beach towel peek through the holes of an outer metallic surface. To create the work, the artist poured molten brass onto a towel draped on a bed of shells and sand which mixes with the liquid material. In its final static state, the material nonetheless retains the bubbling, swirling appearance of its former movement, the mundane towel enshrined beneath given a new gravity, turned into an unexpected object of worth and contemplation.

Installation view of Guillaume Leblon’s exhibition Under My Shoe, 2013
Photo by Arthur Evans

MCC