The Fondation Zinsou has given artist Joël Andrianomearisoa,
all its spaces, from the Foundation's headquarters in Cotonou to the Ouidah Museum,
in a carte blanche entitled
SUR UN HORIZON INFINI SE JOUE LE THÉÂTRE DE NOS AFFECTIONS.
This is the artist's first major solo show on the continent and in Benin.
In an unprecedented rhythm, he took over the spaces: with installations, words, objects, images, sounds and moods, with the complicity of the entire Foundation team, friends and local know-how.
SUR UN HORIZON INFINI SE JOUE LE THÉÂTRE DE NOS AFFECTIONS
is a sensory exploration, interacting with everyone.
It's about feeling, desire, the world, our time, an encounter, one day or forever, a departure, a journey, a before and after.
A studio in constant evolution, with moving elements and appointments.
A world, unique to the artist, imbued with a duality where gentleness and caress sometimes clash with coldness and fragility.
coldness and fragility.
By cultivating this ambiguity, Joël Andrianomearisoa shows us the collective construction of a sentimental architecture
of an obsessive sentimental architecture, sometimes dark but above all sensual.
La carte blanche is divided into 3 acts in three spaces
ACT I
THE TIME OF A MEETING OR FOREVER
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Joël Andrianomearisoa
at the Fondation Zinsou headquarters in Cotonou
The scene is a hotel somewhere in the world.
One of those grand hotels from another time, but very much of today.
From the reception to the garden, from backstage to the staircase, from the bedrooms to the ballroom,
glances dance and bodies meet.
Heartbeat - Fragile moment.
To the rhythm of these palpitations, mirrors negotiate with our amorous images.
A mad bouquet embraces the song of a distant land.
In a sentimental waiting room, sheets seek perfection.
In The Ballroom, the theater of our society is played out.
And a feast in the worldly restaurant already heralds the end.
Off to the station, the port, the airport...
ACT II
THE LAST KISS
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Joël Andrianomearisoa
at the Foundation’s Test Garden in Ouidah
The garden hosts for the first time a permanent installation imagined by the artist,
designed between architecture, feeling and landscape.
The work is a metaphor for the public bench on which we meet.
An architecture that is both strict and rigorous that will live to the rhythm of plants and feelings.
We love there, we dream the world there but above all we give each other the ultimate kiss before sinking
in the dark night of oblivion.
ACT III
AFTER
OBLIVION
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Joël Andrianomearisoa
Joël Andrianomearisoa
at the Ouidah Museum
After the meetings here are the separations. Some will leave and others will stay.
A boarding lounge, a station platform, a wharf at night rustling with a thousand goodbyes.
So upstairs, solitude is there, present in the absence. Black tears light up in the light of oblivion.
The gardens remind us of the beautiful memories, the handkerchiefs in the wind collect our tears.
What eyes your eyes, far so far, so far in the dark.
Joël Andrianomearisoa makes this exhibition beat through the forms and references that are dear to him, Jeanne Moreau who dialogues with Maria Bethânia but also Edgardo Cozarinski with Elie Charles Abraham.
A sentimental journey from Buenos Aires to Antananarivo via Paris and Porto Alegre.
But it is on the stage of Cotonou and Ouidah that the infinite desires are revealed.