OFLUXO

To celebrate the Midsummer and the long-awaited endless summer nights, The Community welcomes ten artists for our second exhibition in Pantin to take over The Community Centre on 9 rue Méhul and the neighbouring The Community Garden on 13 rue Méhul.

In “Mystic May”, the artists, whose works linger between fantasy and realism, reinterpret the existing structures of the urban environment and place them into re-imagined settings with otherworldly characters and narratives. The works witness a search for alternative identities, spaces and times, and a sketch for imaginary universes surrounded by magic and folklore tales. Suburban houses become alive and haunted, alley cats rule from the rooftops; metamorphosed plants grow in the garage boxes while sculptures become shelters for bucolic spirits and totems erect from the concrete garden. The conveying forces and energies of the natural and spiritual world are expressed through careful study of materials in their contemporary forms – including 3D printing, bronze, clay, epoxy resin, and graffiti. The techniques and materials reflect a quest for sensuality and a return for expressivity, even romanticism, recalling the artist’s role as a refined craftsman.

The fantastical characters and sometimes zoomorphic limbs and structures in the exhibition guide us towards a more sensitive and embodied relationship with the surrounding nature: the ensemble of works creates shelters and manifestations of collective imagination and communal care, questioning the liminal space of physical and imaginative boundaries. Eco-sculptures and organic artefacts intertwined with sometimes shamanist layers and historical tales provide a different scenario as if revisiting a childhood dream. By looking deeper into the moods of suburban and metropolitan realities and environments, the artists bring forward the potential of this expanded space as a site for daydreaming, bringing forward a different psychology of space and time.