Damien Cabanes, This phrase is chosen with care
February 17 – March 17, 2007
Mike Weiss Gallery is pleased to announce This phrase is chosen with care, an exhibition of new work by the French artist Damien Cabanes. This is Cabanes’ first solo-exhibition in New York, which features a series of ceramic sculptures and a group of large-scale oil paintings on canvas.
Cabanes’ abstract renderings of the human figure are gestural, expressive and highly spontaneous. His work stylistically recalls that of Outsider Art and Art Brut, and echoes predecessors such as Giacometti and Dubuffet. The sculptures on view, which measure from eight inches to three feet tall, are either left unpainted or are loosely painted in a mixture of colors. Like the sculptures, the canvases depict solitary figures, which are painted against a monochrome background. Cabanes works directly from live models and it is this impact of presence on the artist which imbues the sculptures and paintings with their strong psychological and communicative power. The fact that Cabanes chooses regular, “everyday” people instead of professional models heightens the emotional impact and ingenuous quality of his art.
Cabanes describes his working method as “as fast as can be, thinking of only what I see before me.” The result of this process is vigorous and direct – the artist’s thumbprints in the clay are evident throughout the figures’ contours and his raw and course brushstrokes transmit a bold intensity. The final shapes Cabanes attains in his paintings and sculptures are directly related to the amount of time he spends working on a particular detail. This is why the hands and faces of his figures often appear to be disproportionately larger and more pronounced than the rest of the body. The expressiveness conveyed by these parts lends itself to greater contemplation by the artist, capturing his attention for more sustained periods of time. Cabanes’ visceral and intuitive approach to art-making culminates in a body of work that radiates with feeling and liveliness.
The exhibition’s title, This phrase is chosen with care, takes its name from a line out of Samuel Becket’s novel, Murphy. When asked why this was his choice for a title, Damien responded: “The title was chosen leaving it over to chance. I have only one book in English at home, and that was Murphy. I pointed fortuitously at the text until the sentence was an answer to the Gallery’s wish for a title…It didn’t take long for this text to make sense to me. This phrase, that was chosen with such care, is the exhibition itself.”
Damien Cabanes was born in 1959 in Suresnes, France and currently lives and works in Paris. He has exhibited widely in museums and galleries throughout Europe and the United States, and will have a solo-exhibition at the Musêe d'art moderne de Saint-Etienne, France in 2008. His work is included in numerous public collections and museums throughout France and Europe, including the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris and the Banque Européenne d’Investissement, Luxembourg.