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Susan
Collis
I don't love you
anymore
June 5th - July 24th, 2010
Susan Collis, Continue Whispering
2010,
Walnut (wood), lapis, Cigar box cedar, macassar ebony, Iroko,
white holly, oxidized silver (hallmarked), sterling silver,
mother of pearl, pearl, white gold, aluminium, gold
leaf...
Variable
dimensions, in six parts, Unique
©
Cedrick Eymenier, Courtesy Seventeen Gallery, London & galerie frank
elbaz, Paris
Just
a few streets away from the frank elbaz gallery Susan Collis
spotted an old café undergoing renovation. Through the window
she glimpsed broken bits of wood, shattered glass and gutted
shelving.
Fascinated by all this debris, she recreated what she
had seen for her solo exhibition I Don't Love You
Anymore. The title can easily be imagined as coming
straight from a pop song or a movie script, but in fact it
references our constant need to throw out, reacquire, remake
and renovate the things that surround us: "I'm interested,"
she says, "in this endless obsession with renewing things,
with the way the old always has to be replaced by the new. I'm
very drawn to the planned obsolescence of our spaces, both
interior and exterior."
Susan Collis, Decent
International
2010,
Pencil on fabriano paper construction, 40 x 50 x 50 cm,
Unique
©
Cedrick Eymenier, Courtesy Seventeen Gallery, London & galerie frank
elbaz, Paris
Collis made identical copies of the remains of the café
– smashed wood, peeling paint, rusty nails and screws – right
down to the last detail, but using far more precious materials
to imitate the rough edges, the stains, the spatterings and
the signs of wear. To reproduce the different colours she
employed veneers of all sorts of exotic woods – rosewood,
holly, ebony, cherry, mahogany, iroko – which were assembled
like a puzzle to produce a consummate illusion of even the
tiniest unevenness.
Susan Collis, I've been bad
2010,
Ebony plank, silver (hallmarked), 10 x 15 x 117 cm,
Unique
©
Cedrick Eymenier, Courtesy Seventeen Gallery, London & galerie frank
elbaz, Paris
This
is craftsmanship reminiscent of the marquetry and stringed
instrument-making of old. The screws and metal stems are
covered with silver, gold, bronze and platinum leaf, while the
chips in the paint and the drilled holes have been made good
with black diamonds, pearls and lapis lazuli.
Susan Collis, These things happen
2010,
Roupala lacewood, iroko, walnut sapwood, white holly, bronze,
silver (hallmarked), 14 x 11 x 134.5 cm, Unique
©
Cedrick Eymenier, Courtesy Seventeen Gallery, London & galerie frank
elbaz, Paris
Collis has also included a piece of fabric meticulously
embroidered with false splashes of paint. This camouflage
specialist works laboriously at things that could be done
spontaneously, rapidly and in a completely arbitrary manner.
Setting special store by the cultural significance of her
materials, she delights in transforming their use value in a
marriage of complex techniques and conceptual references that
stands the standard artistic hierarchies on their heads. The
Collis oeuvre embodies a strange encounter between a
pared-down Minimalist aesthetics and the most traditional
craft forms, in a frank rejection of contemporary art's taboos
regarding beauty, technical prowess and sheer hard
work.
Florence
Ostende
Susan Collis, Untitled
2010,
Dustsheet, embroidery thread, Variable dimensions,
Unique
©
Cedrick Eymenier, Courtesy Seventeen Gallery, London & galerie frank
elbaz, Paris
Born
in 1956 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Susan Collis lives and works
in London.
Selected exhibitions: 2010: Since I fell for
you, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (solo); Commissioned
artist of the Armory Show;
2009:
Bizarre Perfection, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem,
Israel; Apparently Invisible, The Drawing Center, NY,
USA.
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