Alberta Pane Gallery is pleased to present, from 16 September to 11 November, the first solo show in Venice by French artist Marie Lelouche (Saint-Junien, 1984).

Interested in the evolution of forms in their technical and cultural context, the artist works through a multidisciplinary approach and with a focus on remix practices.

In this solo exhibition Marie Lelouche presents both new works conceived for the gallery space in Venice and works belonging to two preexisting series (Failed to Synchronize and Out of Spaces), created during two artist residencies, respectively at Fabbrica Alta in Schio (Italy) in 2019 and at Les Tanneries - Centre d’art contemporain (Amilly, France) in 2021. These installations have a strong connection with the territory, the architecture and the building in which they were conceived and created. The artist readapts them to the space in order to weave a dialogue with the Venice gallery that houses them. The space becomes dichotomous: at once real and virtual, interior and exterior, inhabited by tangible and intangible, abstract and figurative forms.

Indeed, the abstract motifs that decorate the sculptures and carpet in Failed to Synchronize have a familiar yet ungraspable appearance; they evoke the impossibility of the memory to reconstruct the past, as well as the fleetingness of layering memories. A song created by the artist also accompanies the work and provide visitors with a multisensory experience, between individuality and universality.

The works in the Out of Spaces series, on the other hand, play on the concepts of the French words espèce (species) and espaces (outdoor and indoor spaces). The artist is fascinated by birds, creatures capable of filling the places they inhabit through the sounds they emit and that serve as reminders for human beings of the passing of time.

Marie Lelouche has therefore developed installations composed of wooden forms that are only apparently abstract, which actually make references to wing structures, cages, prostheses, prototypes; she then accompanies them with photographs printed on fabric with patterns that recall the bird plumage. Integral to the work is a virtual reality helmet that allows for an immersive experience through images and sounds, the latter reproduced in real time and consisting of bird cries from the Tanneries Park (Amilly, France), where the artist has installed a microphone. The visitor is thereby given the opportunity to have a perceptual and sensory experience, at once inside and outside the space, in a continuous process of localization and de-centralization. In Unforeseen Spaces, presented concurrently with the 18th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, the artist thus seeks to engage the viewers in an experience that, thanks to augmented reality devices, becomes multisensory: touch, sight, and hearing are all stimulated, making the experience dichotomous and immersive.

Marie Lelouche is a French artist, whose practice deals with different forms of spatiality. Born in 1984 in Saint-Junien, Marie Lelouche graduated from Ensba in Paris, obtained a Master's degree in Visual Arts at La Sorbonne (Paris), and completed a program at Le Fresnoy with honours of the jury. She is currently finishing a PhD/creation in post-digital sculpture at Le Fresnoy (Tourcoing, France) in collaboration with UQAM (Montreal, Canada). Her colorful and multi-faceted work - which tends to abstraction - has been shown in several solo exhibitions, such as at Mazzoli Gallery (Berlin, Germany), Spazio Thetis (Venice) or Centre d'Art Contemporain Les Tanneries (Amilly, France). The artist’s next project is in collaboration with the Jeu de Paume in Paris; she will present an online creation accompanied by events taking place at the museum.

Moreover, her works have been exhibited in fairs such as Drawing Now (Paris, France), ArtBrussels (Brussels, Belgium) and Artissima (Turin, Italy) and in numerous group exhibitions including those at the National Studio of Contemporary Art (Seoul, South Korea), at the Cyan Museum of Art (Cyan, South Korea), at A. dition Gallery (Seoul, South Korea), at Mirage Festival (Lyon, France), at Cité du Design (Saint Étienne, France), at Musée du Lam (Lille, France) and at Fondazione Francesco Fabbri (Treviso, Italy). Interested in the evolution of forms in their technical and cultural context, with a focus on remix practices and the perceptive possibilities offered by Extended Reality (XR), Marie Lelouche won the DICRéAM, the Pictanovo Interactive Experience Fund, received a special mention for the Adagp Revelation Digital Art Prize, and was a finalist for the Opline Prize and Siemens Ingenious Prize.