Goodbye Darkness
curated by Anlam de Coster
40 rue de Poitou PARIS, FRANCE
October 15 - 29, 2018
Ballon Rouge proudly presents Marie Jacotey’s first solo exhibition in Paris curated by Anlam de Coster Arslanoglu. Exploring intimacy within relationships with her witty and raw storytelling, Jacotey imagines an in-situ textile installation: Goodbye Darkness, the recreation of an odd bedroom with curtain walls and several beds, setting the stage for her fragmented narratives. Pushing the boundaries of her drawing practice, she creates a work across media and genres with this large-scale hand drawn textile installation.
The bedroom, witness of our solitude but also altar to our most personal pleasures and fantasies is at the heart of Marie Jacotey’s latest piece. Depicting brutally honest love stories through images and poetry with no linear narrative, the drawn sequences flow over the top of an ivory silver fabric that also embalm the beds. Jacotey’s distinctive female and male figures, their impulses and desires - snapshots from their lives - float around the space covering up walls and beds.
The chamber is a fertile ground for introspection. Its main fixture, the bed, is where we free our bodies and subconscious, the temple of vulnerability where we transcend reality and enter dreams. This is where life is conceived and where life ends. Carrying imagined bittersweet memories, this installation reflects on the ephemeral nature of intimacy and the vanity of life. Intense moments of coexistence and cold terror of abandonment are interlinked in this space. The beds carry the ambiguity between the utmost intimacy and the fear of separation.
The exhibition culminates in a series of new drawings accompanying the installation. Storyteller of emotionally charged narratives, Marie marries melancholy with an irresistibly dark sense of humor. An urge to love and to be loved is omnipresent, but never takes itself too seriously.