Born from 10 months of work in residence at the Cinq Dimensions gallery, I am delighted to present this new solo exhibition, intimate and deeply engaging, by Abel TECHER.
Alongside the paintings, you will discover sketches and prototypes that illustrate the artist's creative journey, from the original idea to the finished piece. Also exhibited are the sources of Abel's inspiration: a plastic soldier, a gilded cup... A video retraces these ten months of residence.
A graduate of the Ecole Supérieure d'Art de La Réunion (ESAR) and trained at the Ecole Supérieure d'Art et de Design d'Alicante in Spain (EASDA), Abel TECHER is a Réunion-born artist from Petite Ile, who was born and lives in La Réunion and has been widely exhibited in France, La Réunion, and abroad for the past 10 years.
He honors us with this exhibition at the gallery.
From the school of surrealist artists, he embraces all the codes and, more importantly, the spirit: the hope of reconnecting man to his inner self and the love of freedom.
However, to label Abel under any single category, especially as a surrealist, does not do him justice.
Abel is, above all, a Réunionnais, and his identity is the central pillar of his artistic expression and worldview. His playground is clearly his culture and his origins.
For Abel, everything is a game, without boxes or rules, and his artistic expression is transgressive.
He lives and expresses his Creole identity simply, transcending it, from the decorative object of any Creole home to the traditional birth ring in gold, the “zano,” from his childhood playing in the dirt searching for buried treasures to the colorful Creole vocabulary, from the plastic toy soldier to a piece of chayote leaf (brèdes chouchou), all interwoven with reflections on today's societal challenges. This is what culture is.
I quote Abel: *“It's somewhat in this sense... I don't know, I thought about it in relation to memories of when I used to play and dig in the dirt, the things I found, like broken porcelain... ceramic, plastic... relics without value... a bit like trinkets, like plastic toys (soldier)... the hollows, the dug-out holes that speak of objects almost without shared stories, hollows that tell parallel stories... it's also about reclaiming the ‘zano,’ which is a popular object, one that many Réunionnais know, yet it isn't part of the ‘official’ history of La Réunion... it's often called the traditional zano, even though we don't exactly know when it became ‘traditional’... and this is often what you find in Creole culture, hollows, voids... but the zano is a transmission, by gesture... it's the idea, in any case, to draw from popular objects to tell different stories, or at least try to speak of other histories.”*
This explains the title of this exhibition: IN THE EARTH, THE HOLLOWS SPEAK TOO.
At 32 years old, Abel’s personal life choices, his tastes, and his passions come together to enrich HIS own culture.
He transforms, transcends, and magnifies it with humor and tenderness through free association, midway between individual imagination and collective heritage, and between self-discovery and the exploration of the hidden worlds of the mind, by juxtaposing unexpected elements.
Thus, with Abel, the chayote grower wears drag shoes, La Réunion floats in the clouds, roosters wear dangling earrings, and the Yab is a delicate and precious porcelain.
His mind, through the creative potential of the unconscious, escapes to realms free of constraints, where detail reigns supreme and imagination is freed from the trivial constraints of reality. He challenges established norms and celebrates diversity.
Abel defies gender norms and explores the fluidity of identity. The maturity he demonstrates in this exhibition is exceptional.
This is the originality of his approach, his contribution to the art scene, and his ability to make his audience think and feel.
After all, don't drag queens, with their ability to embody multiple and changing identities, and to play with cultural symbols and stereotypes, offer fertile ground for exploring concepts of fluidity, transformation, and self-reinvention?
Enjoy your visit. Let yourself be carried away.
And feel free to leave a note in the guestbook.
Vendu