BRUSSELS.- Following the success of Projet Phenix, a highly acclaimed immersive solo exhibition in 2021, Prune Nourry is returning to Galerie Templon’s Brussels space this autumn with a brand-new artistic proposition. Infinite Arrows offers an in-depth exploration of the symbolism of the arrow, which has been an integral part of Nourry's artistic universe for almost four years.

The mythological figure of the Amazons, a tribe of huntresses who, so legend tells us, cut off their breasts to make it easier to shoot with a bow, appeared in the artist's visual work following her breast cancer in 2016. Two years later, in New York, she embarked on the sculpture of an Amazon nearly four metres high, almost entirely covered in thousands of incense sticks. Like acupuncture needles echoing the themes of ritual and healing, the objects became a recurring element in the artist's installations, sculptures and lithographs along with various attributes of the warrior-woman, from bow to arrow to target. In January 2021, in the midst of lockdown, she exhibited a monumental work, L'Amazone Érogène, composed of 888 arrows floating delicately in the atrium of the Bon Marché Rive Gauche in Paris.

With Infinite Arrows, Nourry presents a dozen new and recent pieces that extend the ideas she began to explore during the creation of this poignant and slowly maturing body of work. The exhibition opens with two dioramas, Arc and Cible, eclectic compositions made of wooden arrows and feathers. Alongside them, four other dioramas bring the gallery walls to life, displaying a variety of geometric forms that are striking in their simplicity: circle, square, triangle and trapezium. These works are the result of eight years of personal reflection and the artist’s key encounter with some of the finest examples of American minimalism at Dia Beacon, part of the Dia Art Foundation, in New York State.

In the next room, the visitor is confronted with Structures (Cercle), a new installation consisting of a multitude of arrows stuck directly in the wall, forming an army of phantom triangles between the different axes. On the opposite wall, Exit / Entrance, an oak target with a curved shape and an imposing nipple at its centre, is surrounded by a cloud of wooden arrows, some of them penetrating the wall while others shoot out of it. A metaphor for the frantic race of the sperm towards the ovum, the work echoes the difficult journey of conception after an illness.

The last room closes the exhibition on a different note, with two almost aerial works consisting of curved arrows made of beech wood and decorated with feathers. Infinite I (Arrows) is alive with the famous mathematical sign in a powerful ode to perennial movement and the number 8, a symbol of balance and perpetual rebirth. Target I (Arrows) is a very different piece, immediately capturing the visitor's attention with a set of five concentric arrows that form a black and white target.

Born in 1985 in Paris, Prune Nourry lives and works in New York and Paris. In her projects, the artist raises ethical questions related to the notion of balance in the broadest sense: the body and healing, the demographic imbalance due to gender selection and scientific excesses, the ecosystem, and the interdependence between living species.

Her artistic approach combines sculpture, installations, performances and video. One of her works is the army of Terracotta Daughters, sculptures inspired by the Xi’an warriors. She took the army on a world tour between 2013 and 2015, from Paris to Shanghai with stopovers in Zurich, New York and Mexico City, before burying it in China where it will stay until 2030. Produced in 2019, her film Serendipity was presented at the Berlin Film Festival, MoMa DOC Fortnight documentary film festival and Tribeca Film Festival and shown as part of the Art Basel film programme.

The first French artist to be invited to exhibit by Bon Marché Rive Gauche, she created a series of emblematic works during lockdown including the monumental installation Amazone Érogène. In early 2022, she designed the set for Atys, the opera-ballet composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully for Louis XIV, in a new version directed and choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj.

Ill : Prune Nourry, Target 1 (arrows), 2022, 5 curved arrows made of beech wood of 8 mm diameter / Natural wood, paint, metal, wire and feathers.