Barthelemy Toguo "The Pregnant Mountain"
Robert Miller Gallery
This event has ended.
Robert Miller Gallery presents The Pregnant Mountain, an exhibition of work made in the past decade by Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo. This will be the artist’s debut at Robert Miller Gallery as well as his first solo presentation in New York City. The exhibition will comprise photography, video, watercolor, and installation, and will close on October, 29 with a new performance, Bitter Destiny #2.
Barthélémy Toguo’s work explores the universal themes of suffering, beauty, identity, pleasure, and exile. Drawing from his own experiences as a member of the African diaspora in France, Toguo’s work conforms to the contemporary art world’s internal vernacular idioms and brings a unique perspective to the cultural dialogue on post-colonialism. In particular, Toguo’s performance series Transits articulates the intersubjectivity of these themes. Photographs documenting these performances will be included in the exhibition. Toguo’s external critique is echoed in the dissonance between form and content in his work, permitting it to slip past our perceptual defenses. The use of “soft” materials and artistic mediums to present “hard” issues gives his messages an added layer of complexity by addressing the relationships between “distancing and disidentification, as well as proximity and identification, of irony and laconic humor, methods of unsettling expectations and reversing proportions, the diversified application of media and differentiated modes of storytelling” (Lundström, Jan-Erik. The Sick Opera. Palais de Tokyo, 2004, p. 30.).
A large-scale installation, entitled “The AIDS issue cannot be solved thanks to the distribution of condoms” Benedict XVI, forms the exhibition’s centerpiece. Evoking an African hospital ward, the title appropriates and re-contextualizes a statement made by Pope Benedict XVI while on his way to Cameroon in March 2009: “You can't resolve [the AIDS issue] with the distribution of condoms… On the contrary, it increases the problem.”
Media
Schedule
from September 10, 2009 to October 29, 2009
Opening Reception on 2009-09-10 from 18:00 to 20:00
Performance: October 29, 6-8pm