PARIS.- Almine Rech announced the representation of Malagasy-French artist Joël Andrianomearisoa in France, Belgium, UK, Shanghai and New York. The gallery will feature his work in Art Brussels 2023 and in a solo exhibition at Almine Rech Paris in 2024.
Joël Andrianomearisoa's work fits into the gallery's program in an original way in relation to other artists already represented, particularly those using textiles and weaving, all while enriching a chapter of the contemporary art landscape that our program seeks to address.
These creative materials were used, although not very much, at the beginning of the 20th century, only to be abandoned for some time. Today they are once again growing in prominence due to a desire on the part of artists to intervene manually with materials linked to the richness of craftsmanship. It represents the desire and sensual pleasure attached to a renewal in continuity of the history of civilizations, as well as a protective reaction to technology and the virtual.
Joël Andrianomearisoa trained as an architect at the École Spéciale d'Architecture; he also sculpts, paints and draws abstract landscapes of wild grasses and reeds, themes that are aligned to his work with these natural elements. – Almine Rech
Born in 1977 in Antananarivo, Madagascar, Joël Andrianomearisoa lives and works between Paris and Antananarivo. He obtained a degree in architecture from the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris in 2003. Embracing a large variety of mediums, including installation, drawing, craft, textile, performance, video and photography, his work investigates the materiality of emotions. Driven by his strong interest in human relationships, the artist expresses feelings through matter, textures, forms and atmospheres. Mixing traditional know-how and craftmanship with the sentimentalism of the digital age, his work reintroduces poetry and sentimentality in minimalist tradition. An artist of his time, he considers his work as ongoing exercises, constantly extracting all the possibilities of textiles, silk paper, glass, flowers, and a variety of objects such as mirrors, to create a multi-faceted, polyphonic oeuvre.
Known in particular for his monumental installations, such as I Have Forgotten the Night at the Venice Biennale in 2019 or Brise du rouge soleil on the tower and ramparts of Aigues-Mortes in 2020, Joël Andrianomearisoa probes the emotional possibilities of urban space. At once imposing and fragile, monumental and meticulous, his work draws from Malagasy multiculturalism and tradition. Interested in the notion of non-geography, emblematic of the culturally diverse influences of Madagascar, Andrianomearisoa explores the universality of human experiences through complex, often abstract narrations.
In 2019, Joël Andrianomearisoa represented the first-ever Madagascar Pavilion at the 58th Venice Art Biennale. His work has been exhibited in leading global institutions including MAXXI, Rome (2018); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2010); the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC (2015) and the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2005) and more recently at the Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town ; the MACAAL, Marrakech (2022) and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021). His work forms part of important international collections including the Smithsonian (Washington DC), The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York), and the Museum Sztuki (Łódź). Joël Andrianomearisoa is also the founder and artistic director of Hakanto Contemporary, a non-profit independent space for artists in Antananarivo, Madagascar supported by the Fonds Yavarhoussen. — Jérôme Sans
Yes I am hungry for time, at times fragile or melancholic, a kiss or a caress,
in color or at night, sometimes flowers, sometimes steel, sometimes cloth, sometimes paper...
but above all, I am eager for a world in all its forms with all its possible forms.
A world poem to materialize every emotion.
An exercise through time, our time, our space, and the multiple geographies of our hearts and the land.
Starting with two vital concepts, that of matter and desire ... to infinity. – Joël Andrianomearisoa
