Demeure (series Invertabrate) - 2023
The Invisible Dog Art Center and the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) Crossing The Line Festival are thrilled to co-present Growing Matter, an exhibition by resident artist Camille de Galbert, inaugural exhibition of our Season 15th.
The exhibition has received the exceptional support of Galerie Krief - Paris
Growing Matter is part of The Armory Show 2023 cultural program
Coral, humus, underbrush, seagrass, lichen: lifeforms all dependent on symbiotic relationships. Their life ability to regenerate is their intrinsic power. Their removal hinders the possibility of new life, making it nearly impossible to artificially create the conditions of their regeneration. Camille de Galbert creates these same fundamental ecosystems through patient, repetitive and cumulative movements. On the other end of this life cycle, we find sediments –the remnants of a life cycle–disintegrating, like these carbon black specimens.
In scaling up and becoming curious about the infinitely small within these symbiotic ecosystems–exploring hidden zones, villus, crevices–Camille de Galbert reveals some of the most mysterious forms of matter. Is Dermis the microscopic magnification of Stratas, or is it the other way around? They both are the interface between the visible and the invisible.
Inspired by fractal art, this dive inside matter suggests that everything finite can continue into infinity. This notion of scale is fascinating because we, as human beings, are faced with finiteness inherent to our human condition, while also being constantly surrounded by countless infinities. Nature is filled with fractal objects–irregularities–that are capable of self-replicating and limitless growth that both amazes us and pushes us to the edges of our comprehension.
As both a woman and artist, the question of movement is central to Camille de Galbert’s work. From dance and films to optical illusions or “trompe l’œil” that change as the viewer moves their eyes, creating a form of kinetic art. The movement of going toward, going in is omnipresent in this work, most notably in curves and the sculpting of casting. Using ancestral materials such as wax, resin, and pigments, as a formal reference to Lynda Benglis, the artist enters a physical relationship with matter as she works with a sense of urgency in an unpredictable medium.
Movement is at the center of all of life, down to the cellular level. The artwork Oeufs relates to cellular reproduction and the desire to recreate a new life cycle. Here we return to movement and to the growth of matter. Growing matter.
Céline Malraux
About Camille de Galbert
Born in 1982, Camille de Galbert is a French-American multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her practice moves seamlessly between encaustic painting and sculpture, drawing and film. Whatever the medium she uses, this self-taught visual artist draws heavily upon movement and her past experience as a dancer.
Camille de Galbert’s work revels in form, volume and texture. She uses repetitive and accumulative mark-making as a way to explore the structures and shapes of organic matter. Using wax, latex or silicone some shapes evoke the sedimentation of time, some feel like smooth skins, others can seem like distorted bodies.
Camille de Galbert graduated from France’s Conservatoire of Grenoble and continued her contemporary dance studies in New York, at The Merce Cunningham Studio. Injuring her knee marked a twist of fate, as she turned her creative attention to filmmaking, sculpture and drawing.
She is an artist fellow at the Jerome Foundation (USA), her artwork has been exhibited at La Maison Rouge (Paris), me Collectors Room (Berlin), Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella, Italy). Her films were selected at over 50 festivals globally and won Best Short at the Miami Short Film Festival (2015), Blowup International Chicago and the Richmond International Film Festival (2016).
Camille de Galbert is resident artist at The Invisible Dog since 2013.
Website: Camille de Galbert
Instagram: @camilledegalbert
Camille de Galbert at The Invisible Dog
2014: Hive
2015 & 2016: Wonderland
2019: Friend of a Friend
2021: Ahlan Wa Sahlan
On View
September 9 - October 15, 2023
Closing Day and Reception
Sunday October 15, 2023
1-7pm
Admission
Free with RSVP
Location
51 Bergen St.
Gallery Hours
Thursday–Saturday: 1–7pm
Sunday: 1–5pm
Monday- Wednesday: By appointment only