Dove Allouche

L'Ennemi
déclaré
Dove Allouche
expose au Crédac
from 21 november 2008
to 11 january 2009
Opening on thursday 20 november 2008
from 5 P.M. to 9 P.M.
Curator : Claire Le Restif
Communication : Eran Guterman / 01 49 60 25 04
[email protected]
Centre d'art contemporain d'Ivry - le Crédac
93, avenue Georges Gosnat - 94200 Ivry-sur-Seine
information : + 33 (0) 1 49 60 25 06
www.credac.fr
Tuesday to Friday 2 PM to 6 PM, Saturday and Sunday 2 PM to 7 PM
free admission
Metro line 7, Mairie d'Ivry
50 m away from the metro station (20 minutes from Châtelet)
Le Crédac receives support from the city of Ivry-sur-Seine, the Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles
d'Ile-de-france (Regional Cultural Affairs), Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (Ministry of
culture and communication), le Conseil Général du Val-de-Marne (Val-de-Marne County Council) and le Conseil
Régional d'Ile-de-France (Ile-de-France Regional council).
le Crédac is a member of tram and
networks.
The 140 graphite drawings (10 x 15 cm) collected under the title Mélanophila_II and
exhibited by Dove Allouche in his show L’Ennemi declare constitute the recreation
of a dazzling flash (melanophila is a beetle that detects fires in order to settle in the
charred area and lay its eggs safe from predators).
The drawings were done from 140 photographs shot in a burnt forest in Portugal.
The path taken by Allouche at that time was mad. He was moving about in a very
limited perimeter. As if the photographic eye had combed the site, examining it from
every angle.
The show is indeed about representing a lost subject while selecting the eucalyptus,
a tree that can quickly regenerate itself. Even if it is a question of representing
something that was, there is a possible return. It is about transcendence, not ruins.
The subject that is depicted is more or less the same 140 times, but from a point of
view that has been shifted around. Reconstruction by drawing is slower than reality.
The photographs, for example, were shot in the summer of 2003 whereas the series
of drawings was only competed for the show five years later, in 2008.
Along with the 140 drawings, there is a photo entitled Portrait of Ninetto Davoli_1,
an actor associated with Pier Paolo Pasolini. This image was shot by Allouche in
August 2008 in Davoli’s home (which was Pasolini’s in Sabaudia, south of Rome), by
the sea near Monte Circeo. The face of the shining, silent angel of Pasolini’s work is
invisible here, 50 years later, since the actor is photographed from below and behind
as he looks over a wall.
This image is, like a voice-over, a photo-over that is no more Davoli’s than
Allouche’s. To Pasolini, Allouche adds Jean Genet, the other of the artist’s two major
father figures.
L’Ennemi déclaré (The Declared Enemy), the exhibition’s title, is also the name of one
of the works featured in it. The title is shown in an electronic display outside the art
center, illustrating the 1991 posthumous collection of texts and interviews by Genet.
The book, which contains 4h à Chatila (Four Hours in Shatila),
accompanied Allouche during the five years he worked on his 140 drawings. The
book’s cover shows frenzied traces of graphite, evidence of the artist using it to
sharpen his drawing pencil.
When Genet penned this “eye-witness account” of the massacres that occurred in the
Sabra and Shatila camps, he hadn’t written in ten years. Genet devised a recreation
of a searingly intense moment in a text of great beauty that goes beyond reality. An
image cannot recreate the horror.
Written with great precision, the text bears witness to a lightening passage and
materializes the force of a recollection, of memory after experience. Just as Dove
Allouche sketched out, during five years, the recreation of a blinding instant.
Claire Le Restif
Dove Allouche
L'Ennemi déclaré, 2003-2008
Traces de graphite sur couverture de livre, 23 x 16 cm
Courtesy galerie Gaudel de Stampa
Dove Allouche
Portrait de Ninetto Davoli_1, 2008
Tirage Duratrans, caisson lumineux, 120 x 180 cm
Courtesy galerie Gaudel de Stampa
Biography
Dove Allouche graduated from the École Nationale d’Art of Cergy in 1997; two years
later he obtained an art grant from DRAC Ile-de-France.
In 2001 he exhibited one of his pieces at La Vitrine in Paris. The following year he
took part in the show Korean Air France (also mounted in Seoul), which was curated
by Julien Fronsacq, before starting in on a residency in Norway as part of A.F.A.A.’s
“programme à la carte.” As part of an extension of his residency, the artist
participated in two group shows at the Abbaye de Maubuisson in Saint-Ouen
l’Aumône and, in 2003, at the F15 Gallery in Moss (Norway).
In 2003 Philippe-Alain Michaud included Mr. Allouche’s film Under the Rays in a
program of works screened at the Louvre Auditorium. After taking part in Scape in
Vilnus (curated by Sandra Patron), Mr. Allouche left for another residency program
between 2005 and 2006 at the Villa Médicis Hors les Murs in Venezuela. At Buenos
Aires’s Contemporary Art Fair of South America, he exhibited the series Le temps
scellé, thirteen photographs taken in Estonia at the site of the Zone from Tarkovski’s
film Stalker.
At Yvon Lambert’s Project Room in Paris, the artist showed for the first time ten
drawings from the series Ménalophila_II. In 2007 Mr. Allouche exhibited nineteen
drawings from this series at the FRAC Aquitaine (which acquired nine of them) as
part of the show Time Out of Point, as well as the series Le temps scellé and Retours,
ten numbered volumes representing the totality of the cards of returned books from
the poetry section of Sarcelles’ municipal library.
In 2008 Gaudel de Stampa, the Parisian gallery representing the artist, devoted a
solo show to him.
In January 2009 Mr. Allouche will take part in the show Pragmatismus &
Romantismus to be held at the Fondation d'entreprise Ricard and curated by Anne
Bonnin.
Born in 1972, Dove Allouche lives and works in Paris.
Dove Allouche
MÉLANOPHILA II ou L'ENNEMI DÉCLARÉ, 2003-2008
Ensemble de cent quarante dessins, numérotés de 1 à 140
Mine de plomb sur papier, 30 cm x 40 cm
Courtesy galerie Gaudel de Stampa
Dove Allouche
SURPLOMBS I_ 1, 2008
Mine de plomb et encre sur papier, 100 x 70 cm
Courtesy galerie Gaudel de Stampa
Informations
about events
during the
exhibition of
Dove Allouche !
Déjeuner-rencontre
Friday 9 January, from 12 AM to 2 PM,
with the artist.
4 euros, reservation required.
Informations :
01 49 60 25 06