Joël Andrianomearisoa: Waiting For The Seventh Day That Will Bring Us Together

Private view: 21 November, 6 - 8 pm

Jack Bell Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Joël Andrianomearisoa. Waiting for the Seventh Day That Will Bring Us Together develops themes originating from the artist's debut solo show at the Goodman Gallery, South Africa.  It also coincides with his participation in 'The Progress of Love', a group exhibition at the Menil Collection, Houston, USA.

Andrianomearisoa frequently experiments with how paper and textiles can be used as a medium, and black features prominently:

"For me, working with shades of black offers infinite possibilities. In every piece, I have to find variations within the scope of black, different postures of black. It is not only a colour, but also an attitude... it aims toward the universal."

This exhibition is centred around a major paper installation consisting of 5,000 individual pieces.  Andrianomearisoa retains a strong interest in design and architecture, sculpture and performance and there are aspects of these disciplines present in all of his work - tactility, structure, geometry and temporality.

Waiting for the Seventh Day continues Andrianomearisoa's ongoing exploration of eroticism, desire and negotiations with love. How does one speak of love, or understand love in the age of reason? The artist's engagement with this contradiction is what forms the raw material of the show. The exhibition highlights the bodily presence of the viewer as itself a central aspect to the negotiation of space and ideas within his work.  "Romantic love", he says, "is never just a private declaration or an emotional contract between two individuals - it is a political battlefield". For Andrianomearisoa, bodies are contested terrain, at times also sites of violence, disease, moral judgment and commodification, and subjected to legislation, marginalisation and criminalisation.

Joël Andrianomearisoa was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar in 1977. He has participated in important exhibitions at the Studio Museum Harlem, New York; Hayward Gallery, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Museum of Art and Design, New York and the Herzliya Museum, Israel, among others. This will be his first solo show in the UK.