#74

 

 Max Fouchy
Wormhole

16/03 - 06/05/2023

Opening Thursday 16/03/2023, 6pm

 

 

For his first solo show at 22,48m2, Max Fouchy fills the space with sculptures made of plastic bottles, the ultimate waste product in our society of overconsumption. The artist is used to working with plastic and often incorporates objects from his daily life into his pieces. He enhances the value of trivial things by releasing the potential of materials, and in so doing, suggests a new way of thinking about our relationship to the world and things.

 

For this exhibition, the artist found inspiration in urban lighting and its orange-yellow glow, also found in domestic settings. Max Fouchy uses heat to bend the plastic pieces which he then fills with colored liquids, creating a gradient color set as defined by the density of the liquid. The industrial plastic shapes assume an organic appearance. The illusion is convincing: the artist appears to have transmuted plastic into glass. Although glass, an infinitely recyclable material, doesn’t have as negative an impact on ecosystems as plastic, it is still a big consumer of fossil resources: marine sand, a primary material in glass production, is not as easily renewable as one may think, and its demand has tripled in the last twenty years.

 

Max Fouchy’s sculptures are meant to interact with their surroundings. The perception of space and the pieces themselves is transformed by a subtle play of light and color. The standard lighting of the gallery will be turned off to permit other light: sunrays coming through the windows and light from the sculptures themselves, recalling the chandelier, which was initially a purely utilitarian object. By the fifteenth century, however, they had become a design statement. Since then, the chandelier has always been a luxury item, in step with the latest trends. Chandeliers were a symbol of wealth and power, adorning the most beautiful palaces in Europe.

 

The title of the exhibition, Wormhole, highlights the striking contrast between object and material. A wormhole is a hypothetical object linking two areas in the space-time continuum. Max Fouchy pieces create a game of references between contrasting elements: inside and outside; liquid and solid; glass and plastic; geometric and organic; utilitarian and ornamental; industrial waste and artefact…

A text by Jack Rothert Garcia will be available alongside the exhibition