Marine Hugonnier
The Annet Gelink Gallery proudly presents the first solo exhibition of the French artist Marine Hugonnier (1969) who lives and works in Londen. The work of Marine Hugonnier conjures up a kind of hyper-reality. In her work the dimension of time and its dynamics play a decisive role.
The work 'Candle' consists of a burning, scented candle, which exhales the odour of a just extinguished candle, thus creating a tight weave of the present and future, a type of an expansion of the future into the present for both the object and the spectator. A similarly fragile materiality is shown in the work "Flower", which presents, like "Candle", an emblem of the convention of vanity. The fresh flowers are almost imperceptibly injured in their naturalness: They have been "painted" with a flower spray that enhances their colour. In the neon piece "Interlude", Hugonnier shows a sign of absence which refers to the moment "in between", or a "non productive time", that here receives a function and identity of its own. All of these works, which have a minimalist form, finely enlarge the borders of the portrayed object.
For the film 'Anna Hanusova' Marine Hugonnier invited a woman who survived the Holocaust as a child in the orchestra of Terezin playing the piano to Vienna, to give a piano performance. Anna Hanusova played a piano piece by Arvo Pärt, which was broadcast live throughout Austria on national radio Ö1. This piece of music was related to her childhood and thus conveys a part of her personal history and of Austria's political past. Posters displayed in Vienna and a newspaper advertisement in „Der Standard" announced this event. Ms. Hanusova's performance at the radio studio took place at the same time as the opening of the exhibition at the gallery, where the broadcast was received via radio. Apart from the radio from which the sound came, the gallery was totally empty. During that night a film was made with the recording of Hanusova's performance, clips of the guests at the gallery opening and shots of urban scenes of Vienna.
