Davide Balula

De la place pour le sable (Room for the Sand) is the generic, polysemic title Davide Balula has chosen for his first solo exhibition at Galerie Frank Elbaz. The inexorable passing of time — materialized in the sand or hour glass — which tightens human condition in its grip, is featured in Woman in the Dunes ("Suna no onna"), the cult film by Hiroshi Teshigahara. The film protagonist, captive in a pit in the midst of a desert, must — in order to survive — ceaselessly evacuate the inflowing sand. Quite antithetic to this doom, Davide Balula’s exhibits purports the idea that man’s action is capable to challenge his fate. He therefore denies or contradicts the authoritative standard time measured in hours, minutes and seconds. This division of time in arbitrary units is nothing but illusory, as demonstrates the artist’s installation entitled Les Humeurs. Les Humeurs (Moods), made up of twelve clocks with modified clock trains, show the passing of time, each at a different pace. The chronological diversity — or “simultaneous diachrony” — may be interpreted as the diversity of human rhythms (or biological clock diversity). Atomic Clock Peninsula antagonizes the concept of atomic standard time, the planetary reference to legal time, enacted on the waves by the Mainflingen radio station in Germany. Simultaneously resorting to this radio channel, the atomic time jammer, or atomic time interfering signal, produces a different time standard in the exhibition area. Sound waves, whether recorded or restituted, play an essential part in the plastic world of Davide Balula. Concrete Step, Memory Recorder is a modified suitcase. In the exhibition environment, it operates as a recorder, behaving like a Flight Data Recorder or “black box” of the event. A mobile device (the photographs it contains substantiate its traveling through New York, Las Vegas and Amsterdam), this sculpture is however amazingly voluminous in an era of micro- and nano-technologies. Compared with its famous precedent, Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise — a portable museum containing, in reduced scale, the artist’s visual works — Concrete Step, Memory Recorder will contain the exhibition space in its audible form. The potential of works of art is the subject matter of the series Static Power. A living sculpture, i.e. a transport crate filled with protective polystyrene, animated by movements both visible and audible, is confronted with a watercolor diptych featuring cardboard boxes. The animation, the origin of which is enigmatic at the time of packing, seems to forebode the extreme power of the art work due to appear later in the exhibition hall.. Heartbeat Exciter examines or scans the possible correlation between electric waves sensors and serotonin secretion in nettles. A vinyl LP record turntable releases — by means of electrodes — heart beats meant to influence the growth of nettles cultivated inside white boxes of varying heights. These boxes have the pure design of minimal sculptures and the graphic silhouette of equalizers. This work is another demonstration of the diversity of idiosyncratic, individual reactions when submitted to similar stimuli. Davide Balula’s works entertain with sciences a distanced relationship, which he mediates through experimental scientific simulation. Analogy is the operating mode, bringing to light similarities between things of the most diverse natures. In La Dilution des coincidences, an array of laboratory glass containers is caught sight of while transforming inside a glassjar, translucent red dice into a liquid swirling, or vortex, inside a glass jar. This astonishing installation dilutes the fatality linked with dice throwing, as it would, in a like manner, dilute the multiple facets of the schizoid personality of Dr. Luke Rhinehart, described in the bestseller novel The Dice Man, since Rhinehart, the protagonist, casts the dice before taking any vital decision.

text by Kathy Alliou

Born in 1978 in Annecy (France), Davide Balula lives and works in Paris (France). Selection of exhibitions : 2007 Sirène du Mississipi, Région Centre (solo). Project Room, CCC, Tours (solo). The Sound of Music, Broelmuseum, Courtrai. Antidote 3, Galeries Lafayette, Paris. Inventaire 2, MacVal, Vitry-sur-Seine. 2006 This Is Not For You, TBA21, Vienne. Re-shuffle : Notions of an Itinerant Museum, Art in General, New York. Deaf, galerie frank elbaz, Paris. Accords excentriques, Domaine de Chamarande. Global Tour, W139, Amsterdam. 2005 Low Fidelity, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers (solo). I still believe in miracles, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Shobus-Mobium, Japan : Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, etc. Mots d’ordre, Mots de passe, Espace Paul Ricard, Paris. Amour notices, Consortium, Amsterdam. Inhabituel, Centre culturel Français, Milan.

Davide Balula
De la place pour le sable