In Capsules Exhibition by Artist in Residence Morgane Erpen – Cairo
Egypt
May 5, 2019
Exhibition Opening
“Nature! We are encircled and enclasped by her — powerless to depart from her, and powerless to find our way more deeply into her being. Without invitation and without warning she involves us in the orbit of her dance and drives us onward until we are exhausted and fall from her arm. […]
We live in the midst of her, and yet to her, we are alien. She parleys incessantly with us, and to us, she does not disclose her secret. We influence her perpetually, and yet we have no power over her.”*
Walking against the wind, breathing through the sand, and running to save time. Man is always indulged in his surrounding, capsuled in constant movement. … being a part of it and being out of it, our relationship with nature is dominated by the challenge of ‘to control or to be controlled’ as if the total integration of man and nature is impossible
Morgane Erpen explores in this exhibition the relationship between man and nature through material explorations. The artist experiments with different materials to create an immersive experience for the spectator. Arriving in Egypt, she was taken by the sand storms, Reyah El Khamasseen, yellowing the sky of Cairo. The sand as her main inspiration makes the greatest part of her work in its different shapes. The work presents the contrast she found while searching for the materials in Cairo, between the traditional process of hand blowing glass and the industrial plastic that is very present in various forms in the everyday life. Is manipulating the “material” our way of giving ourselves a sense of authority over what controls us?
*Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ode to Nature.
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Opening Sunday May 5th, 7:00 pm
First floor, The Townhouse gallery
10. El Nabrawy st. off Champollion, Qasr an Nile,
Downtown, Cairo