DE L’EFFACEMENT DE LA FIGURE HUMAINE : Exposition collective / Group Show : Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, Djabril Boukhenaïssi, Eugène Carrière, Raphaël Denis, Alessandro di Lorenzo, Gabriel Leger, Éric Manigaud, Thien-Ngoc Ngo-Rioufol, Bruno Pelassy, Kelly Sinnapah Mary, Lawrence Weiner

« The erasure of the human figure is addressed in the context of modern and Contemporary art  movements,  notably  in  abstraction.  Abstract  art,  from  the  early  20th  century  onwards,  sought  to  move  away  from  figurative  representation  of  the  human  body,  in  favor  of  shapes  and  colors  that  did not necessarily imply the human presence. Artists such as Mondrian, Malevich and Kandinsky  created works in which the human figure was either completely absent, or indirectly evoked through  geometric shapes or non-figurative compositions.

More recently, in postmodern or conceptual works, the erasure of the human figure can symbolize  a disconnection between the individual and his or her environment or representations. The human  becomes less central, even anonymous, in an increasingly technological and depersonalized world.    The erasure of the human figure can be a way of denouncing a loss of individuality, a disconnection  from  the  self,  or  a  phenomenon  in  which  the  human  becomes  subordinate  to  external  forces,  whether  technological,  economic  or  social.  (...)  It  is  often  a  critique  of  modern  or  postmodern  conditions in which the individual seems to lose his or her place or meaning. »

(Source : chatGPT)

After nearly six years of activity  at KOMUNUMA, for our latest exhibition  in  Romainville,  we  wanted  to  address  the  theme of the erasure of the human  figure.  In  dialogue  with  Djabril Boukhenaïssi, Raphaël Denis, Gabriel Leger and Éric Manigaud, we  invited  two  emerging  artists, Alessandro di Lorenzo  and  Thien-Ngoc Ngo-Rioufol, the former  recently  discovered  at  the  Beaux-Arts  in  Paris,  the latter at DOC, an artistic  production  space  in  the  19th  arrondissement. Supported  for  several  years  by  art  critic, 

poet and exhibition storyteller  Chris Cyrille- Isaac, with whom  we  collaborate  regularly,  we  wanted  to  involve  visual  artist  Kelly Sinnapah Mary, whose  studio  we  visited  during  a  prospecting  trip  to  Guadeloupe  last  winter.  We  have  also  solicited  our  colleagues  with  whom  we  opened  the  site  in  2019,  who  have  kindly  entrusted  us  with works by Bruno Pelassy and  Lawrence Weiner  (Air  de Paris), Renaud Auguste- Dormeuil  (Fabienne  Leclerc  -  In Situ) and Eugène Carrière (Jocelyn Wolff).

To  take  an  interest  in  the  erasure  of  the  human  figure  is  to  address  the  dizzying  question of time, memory and  remembrance, that of identity,  confused and fragile, and more  fundamentally  to  confront  the  sensitive issue of humanism in  contemporary  art  and  in  our  societies.