Allan Villavicencio, Untitled, oil stick,oil, acrylic, spray on canvas, 50 x 40 cm, 2019

LA RECHERCHE DU RAYON VERT Opening Thursday April 4th 2018 from 6 pm to 9 pm

Allan Villavicencio Solo show Curated by Anaïs Lepage

From April 5th to May 25th 2019 From Wednesday to Saturday From 2 pm to 7 pm

MAËLLE GALLERY Contemporary art gallery 1 - 3 rue Ramponeau 75020 Paris +33 (0)6 14 80 42 00 [email protected] www.maellegalerie.com

Contact [email protected]

Allan Villavicencio is a recipient of the Cité internationale des arts Visual Arts Committees TABLE OF CONTENTS

Maëlle Gallery 1 - 2 contemporary art gallery

La recherche du rayon vert 3 text by Anaïs Lepage

Allan Villavicencio 4 biography

Anaïs Lepage 5 biography

Visuals 6 - 9

Allan Villavicencio 10 - 12 CV Artists represented 13

Practical Information 14 LA MAËLLE GALERIE CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY

Set up in 2012 by Olivia Maëlle Breleur, the Maëlle Gallery supports contem- porary artistic creation both nationally and internationally. Situated in the Belleville district of Paris, the gallery seeks to foster an «archipelagic thinking». Reflected in a fragmented and cohesive line, it resolutely embraces questions of space – residual or in a state of ruin – memory, history, bodies and identities, gender – be it cultural or sexual – and takes a sensory approach that may be anthropological, social or political.

The Maëlle Gallery defends the work of established artists, such as Jean- François Boclé, Ernest Breleur and Sébastien Mehal, but also those emerging on the international scene, such as Agata Kus, Jérémie Paul and Allan Villa- vicencio. The gallery is also a platform for confirmed artists participating in major solo or collective exhibitions and whose works belong to major public and private collections: the Saatchi Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, the Fond National d’Art Contemporain, FRAC (Poitou-Charentes, Martinique, Réunion), the World Bank, the Maison Européenne de la Photo- graphie, the Fondation Clément, Frédéric de Goldschmidt, Antoine de Galbert, and the Fondation de Corse pour la promotion de l’art contemporain...

Aware of the need to break down the barriers in imaginations, the Maëlle Gallery is also committed to Caribbean artists and envisages the « Greater Caribbean » as a vast Afro-Latino-American region. The gallery focuses in particular on emerging and major names of the Caribbean ; artists whose history naturally articulates with those of Africa, the United States and .

The Maëlle Gallery also proposes a program of exhibitions presenting the works of historic artists, such as Paul-Armand Gette, Alain Faure, Fred Forest, ORLAN and Claudio Perna, internationally renowned artists, such as Eduardo Kac, Barthélémy Toguo, Yasmina Bouziane, but also emerging artists, such as Julien Creuzet, Daniel Otero Torres, Nicolas Momein, Alexandre Bavard, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien, and Nelson Pernisco.

In the wake of Edouard Glissant, Maëlle Gallery refutes the notion of a « single root » and inscribes itself in a « totality-world » that artists let themselves traverse to constitute a « new region of the world ».

The gallery is present at an array of international fairs: ZsONA MACO (, 2017, 2018, 2019), Untitled (Miami, 2017, 2018), AKAA (Paris, 2017), YIA (Paris 2016), Art Paris Art Fair (Paris, 2016), Swab (Barcelone, 2015) , or Art Marbella (Marbella, 2016) with « Focus Venezuela », a non-commercial proposition backing the resistance movement in the light of the country’s political and economic crisis. The gallery thus confirms its commitment and its desire to take a stance in causes that it feels are vital.

The Maëlle Galerie is an active member of the Comité Professionnel des Galeries d’Art and of Grand Belleville.

1 LA MAËLLE GALERIE GALERIE D’ART CONTEMPORAIN

Opaline et Vâyou, exhibition view, January 2016, Maëlle Gallery

2 La recherche du rayon vert TEXT BY ANAÏS LEPAGE

At dawn or dusk – and only when the weather is fine – a green ray could form above the upper rim of the solar disk as it rises or sets. Is a green ray produced by an atmospheric phenomenon, an illusion of the vision or the variance between the perception of the horizon and the earth’s curve ?

In affinity with this optical manifestation and its theories, the painter Allan Villavicencio continues his ex- perimentation with painting as perception: visual perception, sensible or material perception, and physical perception. For him, painting is an accumulation of matter and sensations. His practice oscillates between a formal relation to a pictorial object, and a gestural and intuitive process that includes the traces and hazards of chance.

Taking inspiration from the spatial experimentation characteristic of , from the sensations of navigation in 3D virtual landscapes, and from the energy of the urban environment, Villavicencio conceives this exhibition as a total landscape. It brings together three corpuses : a painting, acrylic paintings and projections of paintings. The constant shifts between these different ensembles – between the figuration of a deconstructed tropicality and the distance of abstract motifs – encourage layered readings and the ambiguity of relations. The mural section sketches a space in motion in which the notion of centre is evacuated, as is the possibility embracing the ensemble. The acrylic paintings depict fragments of visions. The projections constitute residues of the landscape.

Devised through different procedures of excavation and aggregation, this « landscape-fragment » is infused with a tension between a sentiment of immersion and a fractured, piecemeal character whose coherence is broken in places. Based on a classic motif of art history - landscape painting - Villavicencio convokes a symbolic narrative of the perception of space. To a linear perspective and a unified horizon - space representation rules that may have for corollaries the navigation, discovery or the idea of ​​another to reach out1 - he prefers systems of disorientation. Mural’s plasticity merges with a vertical perspective that could be virtual. An extravagant phantasmagoria replaces the horizon as far as the eye can see. New relationships between old and new, body and painting encourage sensory stimulation

Throughout, Allan Villavicencio sows mental reminiscences of images and gestures. Here and there we can see echoes of the hitherto erased massive and interlaced sculptures of ’ mural, America Tropical (1932), or the Cubist accents of ’s Paisaje Zapatista (1915) in its organization of hollows and protrusions. These visual echoes act like layer “masks” superimposed on one another, both disjointed and connected together.

Other memories are the ones of the body’s movements in multiple directions which invite a re-reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s final work,L’Œil et l’Esprit (Eye and Mind, 1964), written by the sea, in another light: “we must go back to the working, actual body — not the body as a chunk of space or a bundle of functions but that body which is an intertwining of vision and movement”2. Here we have a visibility experienced by the body as it paints, but also by the viewer contemplating the painting. It is all a matter of sensible focal distance, of the “seeing-seeable bod”. It is up to us to ask ourselves what we have before our eyes and what its modes of existence are. Continuing in the words of the philosopher, these elements, “Light, lighting, shadows, reflections, color, all these objects of his quest are not altogether real objects ; like ghosts, they have only visual existence.”3

“In Search of the Green Ray” thus unfolds in a combinatorial of colours and forms akin to camouflage, trompe-l’œil, and to mirage, in the image of the observation of the atmospheric phenomenon whose awaiting it describes. In a reflection on the in-progress and the completed, it may be perceived as its pictorial act and the quest for the Green Ray : that of a pretext to go searching for the visible and for disorientation, for fragmented perspectives. A deflection against the line.

Anaïs Lepage

1Hito Steyerl, In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective, eflux journal, 2011. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/24/67860/in-free-fall-a-thought-experiment-on-vertical-perspective/ 2 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’Esprit, 1985 (première parution en 1964), Gallimard, p.16 3 Ibid, p.26

2 ALLAN VILLAVICENCIO BIOGRAPHY

Allan Villavicencio was born in in 1987. Lives and works in Mexico.

The pictorial exercise of Allan Villavicencio arises from the chance encounter with the accident, regardless of an unstable order, more open to both certainty and failure. Therefore, the unfinished, the fractured, and the worn-down become remarkable qualities in his paintings, superimposed on conventions and traditions. Only in this way can it be understood that with Villavicencio painting is strictly a «practice», that is, a way of creating, an intuition and a strategy.

He received his Bachelor’s of Visual Arts from the National School of Plastic Arts at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) in 2010. He has participated in different exhibitions in Mexico, France, England, Peru and Colombia. He has won various awards, including the Young Creator Scholarship in two terms: 2010 and 2013; was selected at the XVI Painting Biennial, 2014. Received honorable mention in the National Nomad Biennial and the V Yucatán Biennial in 2012. In 2014 he received the Acquisition Prize of the National Encounter of Young Art in Aguascalientes. He was selected in the Residencies Program Zona 6, Luis Adelantado Gallery in 2015 and in the 2nd Lanscape Biennal, Hermosillo, the year after. In 2018, he was appointed Member of the National grant for artists “FONCA” (National system of creators of Mexico).

4 ANAÏS LEPAGE BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1987. She lives and works in Paris.

Trained in Art History at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris, in Museum Studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal and in Curatorial Studies at the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Anaïs Lepage has multiplied experiences in France and abroad at the Museum of Contempo- rary Art in Montreal and with freelance curator Guillaume Désanges for exhibition projects at La Verrière - Fondation Hermès in Brussels and for the 8th Biennale of Contemporary Art at Louvain-La-Neuve (Belgium). Since 2014, she is involved in museums dedicated to contem- porary art as assistant curator at Museum of in the City of Paris, at Museum of Contemporary Art of Chengdu (China) and recently at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Inspired by collaboratives energies and international dynamics, she co-founded heiwata, a curatorial platforms with members based between Mexico, Paris and Toronto. As freelance curator, she worked on various projects including collective show «Quart d’heure american» for 50th AICA Congress. Combining an institutional and experimental approach of creation, her art interests converge around underrepresented aspects of art history, hybridity in contem- porary art, relationships between fiction and document and multidisciplinary practices. She regularly contributes to exhibition catalogues, monographs and critical reviews.

5 Allan Villavicencio, Untitled, oil stick, oil, acrylic, spray on canvas, 50 x 40 cm, 2019

6 Allan Villavicencio, Untitled, oil stick, oil, acrilyc, spray on canvas, 50 x 40 cm, 2019

7 Allan Villavicencio, Fish eye, oil stick, oil, lacquer, acrylic on canvas, 200 x 400 cm, 2019

8 Allan Villavicencio, Desplieges, exhibition view, 2017

9 ALLAN VILLAVICENCIO CV

Allan Villavicencio was born in Mexico City in 1987. Lives and works in Mexico.

SOLO SHOWS

2019 La recherche du rayon vert, Maëlle Gallery, Paris, France 2018 Vibras, Galerie Luis Adelantado, Mexico, Mexico Notes for a landscape, Galerie IK Projects, Lima, Peru Despliegues, CRGS, UDEM, Monterrey, Mexico 2017 Construir una grieta, Libertad Gallery, Querétaro, Mexico 2016 Un vacio edificado, Galerie Luis Adelantado, Mexico, Mexico 2015 Solo Project, Matadero, Contemporary Art Fair, , Espagne 2014 Los invasores del espacio mutante, La trampa gráfica contemporánea, Mexico, Mexico 2013 De lo retorcido a lo cotidiano, Galerie Autonomous Mexico State University(UAEM), , Mexico 2012 Realidades encontradas, Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM), Mexico, Mexico 2011 Archivo gráfico (Graphic Archive), TACO Gallery, Mexico, Mexico 2009 Desfragmentación, FAD gallery, UNAM, Mexico, Mexico

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)

2019 Cinco espacios en el quinto, Quinto piso, Mexico City, Mexico Encuentro de Arte contemporáneo, (cur by Alberto Rios) , Mexico Biennal, Michoacan, Mexico 2018 XVIII Rufino Tamayo Biennial, Contemporary Art Museum of Oaxaca, Mexico Creating movement of the program young creators 17-18, FONCA, Oaxaca, Mexico México : Pintura reactiva, Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico City, Mexico FUEGO, Fuego cdmx, Mexico, Mexico 2017 Recent paintings, ArtBo, Galerie Luis Adelantado,Bogota, Colombia El placer de la incertidumbre, Cultural House San Rafael, Mexico, Mexico Zona Maco Art Fair, Galerie Luis Adelantado, Mexico, Mexico WHY WHY WHY!, Isabel la Catolica 231, Mexico, Mexico 2016 IILandscape Biennial, Contemporary Art Museum of Sonora, Mexico Tropismes, Launch of the curatorial collective heiwata, Cité des Arts, Paris, France Incitatus, Celda Contemporánea, University of Claustro of Sor Juana, Mexico, Mexico Capital flight, Chalton gallery, London, UK Le rhinocéros est mort, Rotolux, Paris, France 2015 Salad Days, Galerie Casa Lamm, Mexico, Mexico Ergos Panoptes, Marco Arce, Fundidora Park Arts Center, Monterrey, Mexico Zona 6, GalerieLuis Adelantado, Mexico City, Mexico Campo inestable, Centro cultural border,Mexico, Mexico Ciudad obstrucción, Galerie 10 ALLAN VILLAVICENCIO CV FAD UNAM, Mexico, MexicoArtificios de disuación, ENPEG Galerie La Esmeralda, Mexico, Mexico 2014 Ergos Panoptes, Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico, Mexico Rufino Tamayo Biennial, Tamayo Museum,Mexico, Mexico National Nomad of Veracruz Biennial, Regional Museum of Querétaro, Mexico XXXIV° Concours National de Jeunes Artistes, Museo Regional de Aguascalientes, Mexico 2013 México-Paris, Jeune Création, Espace interculturel Université Paris III, Sorbonne, Paris, France Creating movement of the program young creators 2013-2014,FONCA, Pátzcuaro, Mexico 2012 New space, Viceroy’s house gallery, Tlalpan, Mexico 2011 Fifth Biennial of Yucatán, Mexico Eight Biennial of Painting and graphic Alfredo Zalce, Alfredo Zalce museum, , Mexico ReCover, Casa del Lago Juan José Arreola, Mexico City, Mexico Creating Movement of the program young creators 2010-2011, Musée d’Art de Querétaro, Mexico 2010 Paralelo al otro, relaciones procesuales, History Museum of Tlalpan, Mexico A Contemporary Vision, 100 Years, MUCA MHistory Museum of Tlalpan, Mexico

GRANTS AND AWARDS

2019 Selected in XI Alfredo Zalce Bienal Biennal, Michoacán, Mexico 2018 Honorary distinction in XVIII Rufino Tamayo Biennial, Oaxaca, Mexico Member of the National grant for artists “FONCA” (National system of creators of Mexico), Mexico 2016 Selected in the II Lanscape Biennal, Hermosillo, Mexico 2015 Selected in the Residencies Program Zona 6, Luis Adelantado Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico 2014 Selected in the XVI emission of the Rufino Tamayo Biennial, Mexico City, Mexico First Prize in XXXIV National Competition of Young Art, Aguascalientes, Mexico Honorary Distinction in the Veracruz Biennial, Mexico 2013 Member of the National grant for artists “FONCA” (National system of creators of Mexico), MexicoSelected in XXXIII National Competition of Young Art, Aguascalientes,Mexico 2011 Honorary distinction in V Art of Yucatán Biennial, Mexico 2010 Member of the National grant for artists “FONCA” (National system of creators of Mexico), Mexico

RESIDENCIES

2019 Cité des arts, Paris, Francia (two month production residency), 2018 Espacio Tomado, Lima, Peru (one month production residency) 11 ALLAN VILLAVICENCIO CV 2017 Permanente, Bogota, Colombia (two months production residency)

COLLABORATIONS AND SPECIAL PROJECTS

2018 Director de FUEGO cdmx, Artist-run dedicated to exhibit painting 2017 Burbuja, collective show: Gwladys Alonzo, Andrew Birk, Sofia Fernandez, Yeni Mao, Clémence Seilles 2015 Presentation of the book Cerca del mar, Aeromoto Library, Mexico City, Mexico Project Presentation of the collective piece Campo Inestable, Centro Cultural Border, with Gaëlle Choisne, Pablo Réol, Juanjo Soto, Francisco Muñoz and Allan Villavicencio, Mexico City, Mexico

ORLAN Barthélémy Toguo Fred Forest Alain Faure Claudio Perna Eduardo Kac Paul-Armand Gette Julien Creuzet Daniel Otero Torres Nicolas Momein Yasmina Bouziane Juan Le Parc Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien Miriro Mwandiambira Mélissa Naomi Airaudi Alexandre Bavard Nelson Pernisco

12 ARTISTS REPRESENTED

Jean-François Boclé Martinique Ernest Breleur Martinique Orlando Britto Jinorio Iris Della Roca Brazil Agata Kus Poland Sébastien Mehal Martinique Oscar Abraham Pabón Venezuela Jérémie Paul Guadeloupe Emmanuel Rivière France Dani Soter Brazil Abel Techer Réunion Allan Villavicencio Mexico

OTHER ARTISTS

ORLAN France Barthélémy Toguo Cameroon Fred Forest France Alain Faure France Claudio Perna Venezuela Eduardo Kac Brazil Paul-Armand Gette France Julien Creuzet Martinique Daniel Otero Torres Colombia Nicolas Momein France Yasmina Bouziane France/Marocco Juan Le Parc France Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien Ivory Coast Miriro Mwandiambira France Mélissa Naomi Airaudi Zimbabwe Alexandre Bavard France Nelson Pernisco France

13 PRACTICAL INFORMATION

MAËLLE GALLERY IS A MEMBER OF GRAND BELLEVILLE AND COMITÉ PROFESSIONNEL DES GALERIES D’ART

Adress 1-3 rue Ramponeau 75020 Paris

Transportation Métro : Belleville (ligne 11-2) Exit : Boulevard de Belleville Bus : 96 - Couronnes

Opening days and hours From Wednesday to Saturday 2 pm - 7 pm

Contact www.maellegalerie.com [email protected] +33 (0)6 14 80 42 00

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