ONE FRAME LIFE: LUCIANA LAMOTHE’S NEW SOLO SHOW AT ALBERTA PANE GALLERY

Luciana Lamothe’s work is mainly sculptural. Her large-scale participative installations take both the materials they are made of, and the sensations of the people, who walk through them, to their utmost limit.

In her sculptures, the artist challenges the strength, ductility, flexibility and hardness of wood and metal. She explores their maximum potential, to prove how the breadth of a transformation process can lead to a new presentation of the material itself. She often exposes materials to transformations that result in the weakening of the structures, revealing fragility and lightness as opposed to their defining strength.

Photography, drawing, performance and video are also part of the exhibition, in which the artist highlights the connections between them and her sculptures. The artist takes the elements she uses to their extreme limits, modifying and reversing their initial use; in her sculptures, for example, the primary function of a door handle is lost, once cuts and burns make it formally useless. In the daytime photographs on show, the shots of the artist's reflections on polluted urban waters disappear. Instead, an opaque image that subverts the idea of self-portrait arises. Finally, in her videos the use of the frame as a minimal unit of audiovisual recording reduces the movement and visibility of the image. Thus, the body becomes central, through absence, glare or opacity. 

“The works in One Frame Life can be seen as doors or portals, linking our inner space to the public one. Luciana Lamothe’s pieces invite us to re-inhabit the surrounding space, after two years of forced distancing, of denied kisses, hugs, handshakes, as well as social life, and protests for the rights of our bodies and of those of others: conflicts with the police, cruel repressions, protesters running through the city; the door of a building that, once opened, becomes a hiding place, a red light that reaches the eyes closed tight by the hands, shielding the head from the blows of the boots”, explains Dorothée Dupuis, the exhibition’s curator.

Luciana Lamothe (1975) is an Argentine artist whose work has been presented in Argentina and internationally at Museu da Mare (Art en Loco, 2010) in Sao Paulo, De Appel art centre in Amsterdam (Fluiten in het Donker, 2011), MACRO in Rosario, Argentina (Sabotage, 2011), La Maison Rouge in Paris (My Buenos Aires, 2015), the Art Basel Cities public art program in Buenos Aires (Rayuela, 2018) curated by Cecilia Alemani; Meridians section at Art Basel Miami curated by Magalí Arriola (2019) among others. Recent solo exhibitions include Fricciones at Ruth Benzacar Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2022); Puedo vivir bajo tierra at El Dije in Mexico (2021); I’m burning here, at Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles (2019) and Mutation at Alberta Pane Gallery, Paris (2018). She has participated in the 3rd Montevideo Biennial in 2016, the 11th Lyon Biennial in 2011, and the 5th Berlin Biennial in 2008. In addition to multiple residencies in Argentina, Luciana Lamothe has been part of the Factatory residency in Lyon in 2022, Atelier Ni in Marseille in 2021, and MANA Wynwood in the United States in 2016. She was also awarded the Kuitca Scholarship from Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires in 2011.

One Frame Life. Luciana Lamothe’s solo exhibition.

Until December 23^rd, 2022.   

Curated by Dorothée Dupuis.

Alberta Pane Gallery. 47 rue de Montmorency, 75003 Paris, France.