Gérard Quenum: Dolls Never Die

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London
Gérard Quenum: Dolls Never Die image
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Event has ended
This event ended on Saturday 27th of October 2012
Admission
Free
Location

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London

Nearest Tube/Rail Stations
Russell Square 0.20 miles

October Gallery is pleased to announce Dolls Never Die, the second solo exhibition of new works by sculptor Gérard Quenum.
Dolls Never Die will present a series of new sculptures and an installation composed of recycled objects whose diverse histories contribute much to the overall significance of the pieces themselves. Like many of his contemporaries coming out of Africa, Quenum’s work is composed of an eclectic mix of objets trouvés – that elevates the pieces into poignant, mysterious and whimsical ‘portraits’ of individuals observed in his local environment. These ‘portraits’ serve as a lens through which we view Africa.

The dolls that Quenum employs as models and part-time actors on his stages are doubly-recycled, in that they have already served as hand-me down props, expressing the imaginative outpourings of generations of European children before having been repackaged and sent off to Africa in overseas aid parcels. The transformations imposed by that harsher environment – the loss, over time and with constant use, of eyes, of limbs and hair – are still incapable of entirely exhausting these puppets of their capacities for speech. In Quenum’s artful assemblages the disparate parts come together to assume a narrative gift of tongues.

The sculptor’s magical ability is in knowing how to engage the faculties of the imagination by transporting the viewer into an alternate realm that transcends space and time. So too, with the types of wooden objects he uses: mortars, ritual drums or pilings that once supported entire houses in the marshy lagoons surrounding Porto-Novo. They contain whole hidden histories of inherited stories – impregnated in the wood – whose roughened surfaces bespeak the lives of other peoples, other worlds and other experiences.

Tags: Exhibition

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