A Temporary Remodeling of the World. Chloé Silbano. painting, object, video

Curator: Cristian Nae

The art project 'A Temporary Remodelling of the World' connects artist Chloé Silbano's concerns about the devastating climate impacts on the planet's natural ecosystem with a personal reflection, both poetic and philosophical, on the sacredness of water for diverse cultures and communities, expressed through the medium of painting and video art.

At first glance, Chloé Silbano's painting is devoid of drama, brightness, strong contrasts or vivid colors. Her visual universe is neither bleak, gloomy or tenebrous, laden with dark tones, grays and tonal contrasts, nor is it exhilarated, full of vigor, dense impasto or broad, energetic brushstrokes. But these are not photographic either, and are only apparently realistic by the omnipresence of the figurative. His specific manner of representation prefers browns, faded tones and vast unfinished surfaces in which the human figure is lost or always absent.

Similarly, the subjects he chooses to represent are only apparently trivial. His images capture activities at once mundane and sacred (collecting water in plastic jugs; praying) and are often rendered by allegorically focusing on performative details - hands clasped over a rosary; palms holding water and displaying effigies of power - signet rings - turned toward the palm cuff in a gesture of acknowledging humility.

The common element in these representations, which extract and contrast visual elements of political and religious power with activities necessary for the daily survival of powerless communities, is the constant presence of water. It is present both in Catholic ritual (which can be read as a symbol of colonial domination of the planet) and in the specific activities of disadvantaged communities in Asia or North Africa. An understated baroque atmosphere runs through these works, in which allusions to ornamental details are in turn reconnected with primary natural sources that provide the model for stylized visual representations, both through the video works that accompany the pictorial approach and through compositional sketches presented sculpturally or Venetian glass sculptures that evoke Marco Polo's travels to the Far East.

Anchored in a reparative hermeneutics such as that suggested by Eve Kossofsky Sedgwick, the artistic practice developed by Chloé Silbano seems to suggest that the function of art is to provide a spiritual practice, capable of reconnecting European modernity with an ancestral spirituality that seems to have been lost, while at the same time recovering an ethical dimension necessary for the urgent reconfiguration of our relationship with nature.

Chloé Silbano is a graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris and ENSCI in New Media Creation. She lives and works in Paris, at Poush. She was an invited artist at the Centre National d’Études Spatiales in 2023. Her work has been exhibited at Gr_und in Berlin, Moments Artistiques in Paris, the Art Center of Villiers-sur-Marne, l’Approche in Brussels, the Fondation Ferrnet-Branca in Basel, among others. She is the winner of the Yishu8 Prize in 2020 and has exhibited in China at the Maison des Arts of Beijing, the National Art Museum of China, Circle Art Center in Beidaihe, HDM Gallery and Winland Hangzhou.