all is porous
Vanessa Billy
9th June – 13th August 2016
Informed by reflections on the way we humans treat and interact with our environment, Vanessa Billy’s new body of work looks at the consequences even the most insignificant actions might have. The gallery’s second exhibition in its refurbished space is in part the result of Billy’s engagement with alchemical processes where trial and error define the final outcome and new materials are tested and exploited to serve the artist’s purpose.
Vanessa Billy’ s strong fascination with energy was at the center of her last BolteLang exhibition Clean Cold Fire (2013) where works such as Smells like electricity (rampant) (2013) gave the invisible power that all our lives depend on a shape by connecting it to its results.
In all is porous her subject of investigation is much more the energy that evades. What happens to all that energy created by us going about our lives – when we take a train, send data, cook, make a phone call, make babies? What are the by-products and side-effects that we do not consciously account for?
Where for her previous exhibition at BolteLang sculpted and cast lemons came to symbolise energy (Refresh Refresh (2013)) for all is porous, Billy has turned her attention to their rind, more specifically the fact that under a microscope the pitted and pocked skin of a lemon resembles our own in both its literal and metaphorical permeability. She scrutinises this porosity or permeability again and again with a series of works executed in bronze, bio-resin, and food grade silicon – circling the paradox that the skin is that which joins us and separates us from the world.
Vanessa Billy was born 1978 in Geneva, Switzerland and lives and works in Zurich.
Recent and upcoming exhibitions include:
solo: Kunsthalle St. Gallen (2016, upcoming); Where is Wild?, c-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e, Brussels; Stranded, Limoncello, London (both 2015); Sustain, Sustain, Collective Gallery Edinburgh (2014); Dear Energy, Sommer & Kohl, Berlin; Vider la terre pour remplir le ciel, Piano Nobile, Geneva (both 2013)
group: Project 1049, LUMA Foundation, Gstaad (forthcoming); Demain dans la bataille, pense à moi, Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne; WAR II, Mostyn, Llandudno; Waterbound, Kallmann Museum, Ismaning (all 2015)
Watch out for Vanessa Billy’s Migros carrier bag coming out soon!