Flavie Audi, Cell-estial

Tristan Hoare is delighted to present Cell-estial, an exhibition of new works
by French-born Lebanese artist Flavie Audi.

Audi is best known for her gem-like glass sculptures, but for this exhibition
she also includes photography and film as a means to investigate the points
at which the natural and artificial worlds meet. In essence, glass is a naturally
occurring, organic material, yet through its modern usage in mobile and TV
screens it has taken on technological significance – as an interface through
which real and virtual worlds are mediated – and it is this collision of realities
that is at the heart of Audi’s practice. To explore how these realms interact,
the show has been divided into two distinct installations, one representing
the physical, the other digital, chaotic nature placed alongside the rational
and man-made.

The first installation, the ‘Physical Realm’, is displayed in the gallery’s rear
viewing space. Here the viewer finds an array of sculptures mounted on
cylindrical black plinths. The titles of these works – Bubbles Of Space and
Fluid Rocks – are apt, for they look like fantastical gems from another cosmos.
In fact, they are blown glass to which Audi has introduced colour pigments
and precious metals, sparking chemical reactions that are simultaneously
scientific and open to chance. The alchemic processes intrinsic to these works
create undefined edges and fluctuating colours, which in turn suggest a
feeling of liquidity and tactile sensuality. In the wall-mounted installation
Cloudscape 7, glass sculptures have been arranged to evoke a galactic
journey through an imagined cosmic nebula, with the resulting clash of
beautiful, unpredictable matter. These sculptures are juxtaposed with
analogue photographic work.

The second installation, the ‘Virtual Realm’, features Gemscape, another wallmounted
sculpture that brings together synthetic and natural materials to
represent a fragment of an imagined planetary landscape. This seamless
combination of real and artificial materials – fake marble, semi-precious and
synthetic gemstones, minerals, resin, and pigments – invites the viewer to
ponder the relative merits of each. This room also includes three puddle-like
glass sculptures placed on the gallery’s floor. All entitled Slice Of Water, their
vivid gemstone hues replicate what the artist refers to as ‘the wellspring of
existence, water, the origin and source of everything.’ Arranged according to
Euclidean perspective, Cloudscape 8 is displayed in this room as the
organised and rigorously geometric counter to the chaos of Cloudscape 7.

The final room, located at the rear of the gallery, features a video work
entitled Landscapes of Mass Replication, which was made in collaboration
and co-produced with Samantha Lee of UniversalAssemblyUnit. In this surreal
animation, Audi's sculptures and photographs are set in a futuristic virtual
realm: a context of cultured geology and artificial land formations.