[17.10.2024 — 16.11.2024]
DS Galerie, Paris
Group show: Jimmy Beauquesne, Omar Castillo Alfaro and David Weishaar.
¶Thomas Conchou
To braid is to intertwine in the same way as we make garlands of flowers, to welcome and celebrate the other person. For this immersive exhibition, Omar Castillo Alfaro is presenting a group of sculptures from his «Naab» project. In Mayan, ‘naab’ means ‘flower’. In Mesoamerica, several centuries after Christ, there was a school of painters who signed their work with flowers; ‘naab’ is a ritual symbol between two worlds, the terrestrial and the aquatic. To braid is to connect and pass. To pass from one to another by creating a link.
Braiding also means knotting. To tie a friendship, the word is not in vain, the love of friends is a knot, a regular and solid series of knots that allows us to tie up.
To braid is about forging links, experimenting and practising, with friendships as a refuge. Braiding, to make stronger: an act of resistance. Jimmy Beauquesne’s drawings on curtain and on paper seem to come from a form of magical realism. The intimate and the pop-culture, the ornamental and the science-fictional are all intertwined. The intertwining of his features creates confusion.Tresser as a figure of three, forming one and remaining three.
Naab (Naab, series), 2024. Installation. Rebar (steel), paraffin, soil, UV print on mirrored stainless steel plate and red filters. Variable dimensions. View of the exhibition Tresser, 2024, DS Galerie, Paris, (FR). © Photos Romain Darnaud.