Enki Bilal. Inbox

Enki Bilal has entered a new phase in his work as an artist. With the support of Artcurial he will exhibit for the first time during the Contemporary Art Biennale in Venice. The exhibition will take place between 8 May and 2 August 2015.
At the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, he will unveil a new installation : Inbox. This is a bold artistic project designed specially for this international event that will be freely accessible to the public. With this installation, Enki Bilal plays with spectators’ senses and their perception of reality. He pushes his artistic approach to a new level, continuing to deconstruct visual imagery. He offers a new experience : to become aware of the disturbing but captivating pleasure of obscurity.
« We are delighted to be supporting this innovative project, conceived by a great artist. It is important for Artcurial that we assert our strong commitment to contemporary creation and culture, at an international artistic event such as the Venice Biennale. The exhibition will be freely accessible to the public who will be able to learn more about this work that transcends the boundaries between different art forms. » explained François Tajan and Francis Briest, Co-Chairmen at Artcurial.
Eric Leroy, Comic Strip expert at Artcurial, commented on the initiative of the project : « Enki Bilal at the Venice Biennale confirms the international stature of his work and the reach of his reputation beyond our shores. He has surprised us once more with this installation, and demonstrated he can have an impact in all mediums.»
Enki Bilal will take up residence in the heart of the convent attached to the famous church of San Giorgio Maggiore, opposite the Piazza San Marco. His show is part of a group of exhibitions hosted by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini during the Venice Biennale, that includes artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Matthias Schaller, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Liu Xiaodong.
In an enclosed, minimalist and darkened space, the spectator stands alone in front of a large screen displaying a continuous stream of indistinguishable colour images. This creates an uncertainty designed to mesmerize and unsettle the viewer. After this initial hypnotic phase, the visitor is faced with a diptych that never completely reveals itself, subjected to alternating effects of light and silence, emphasising the relationship between the discontinuity of light and the sensuality of the body. This is where
we find the dark and passionate romanticism that characterises the work of Enki Bilal. The artist concentrates on the fragility and uncertainty of our visual memory, on the contradictions and the material nature of the images. He draws on the need to focus on the present moment and to rely on one’s sensibility and intuition. In this way the spectator is able to immerse himself totally in the work, in a poetry that is both physical and mental.
« It is a play on the senses, and the withdrawal of these senses, but also on our assessment of reality. The visitor experiences the frustrations of his visual memory, faced with the impossibility of focusing on a conventionally hung piece of work to take a particular viewpoint. Then, he must move on and leave the box, the after images still haunting his retina. This is an ephemeral and solitary experience. » suggests Enki Bilal.
The exhibition Inbox by Enki Bilal is to be organised in collaboration with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.
 
ENKI BILAL, ART IN ALL ITS FORMS
The path of Enki Bilal’s career has been built on daring and independence : draughtsman, filmmaker, painter, costume and set designer for contemporary opera and the ballet Romeo and Juliet by Serge Prokofiev. His work is based on genuine aesthetic requirements that are visionary and have evolved over time, not the pseudo-desire of an anecdotal and sterile modernity that can only ever be a compromise.
An artist full of passion, he likes to convey emotion, and to share something with the reader and the spectator. The essential element is in the gesture and the revelation : the art becomes a form of self-portrait, but one that we can only discover piecemeal, an introspection on the elements in his work, the relationship he has with reality and his way of understanding the world, a eloquent reflection that embraces his work.
Through the mediums of comic strip, painting and cinema, personal elements rise to the surface. His work bears the mark of both a culture and a sensibility, an interaction between the unconscious and the conscious, a reflection in the shadows entwined with childhood memories. The enemy, and the beauty in
that, where least expected. It is creation that surpasses the graphic legacy and upsets the historical framework, that breaches traditional forms and codes. The integrity of the drawing remains, however. A presence manifests itself, out of the work and the subject, from the subjectivity of the artist and the
sensibility of the spectator : to look at things head on, to challenge our anxiety and fears. A guideline that relates to history and to ambiance, and remains attached to a strange, fantastical universe.
With each comic book, Enki Bilal revives his artistic expression and embraces a style that is freer and more spontaneous. The space expands while colour remains the centre of gravity, an essential raw material, a natural element that breathes life and carries an emotional force, accompanied by dynamic
gestures that reveal the intensity of the moment. The composition is related to the range and rhythm of the colours, a deliberately restrained palette dominated by the cold tones and harmonies that characterise his work: gradients, contrasting and complementing. Lines and surfaces intertwine, without spatial discontinuity, entanglement or unnecessary agitation. The interaction of colours gives the drawing its depth and coherence, in a space where the contours often remain undefined.
This is a visual immersion, and the artwork becomes a colour field and a force field, shaped by the fusion of the characters and the space, with large areas scarcely troubled by small touches of light and warm tones, and often whole frames dominated by the incisive trait of Indian ink. But the line itself is not that important : it is trapped and overwhelmed. The drawing is a rhetorical element that assembles and juxtaposes opposites, with sensuality, unable to flourish in the banal, conceived in the union of polar opposites, pleasure and pain. Light cannot exist by itself, but requires darkness to accentuate its luminosity, which leads us to those vital things that must collide for creation to occur: love and its absence, a desire for eternity and ephemeral life, reality and fantasy. Conflict is the rule and harmony the exception. Desire, not linked to any objective reality, cannot be innocent. No gentle illusion, it is inevitably destructive. Passion contains everything, love and hate are one.
Enki Bilal doesn’t separate art from life, he paints the feelings that pass before his eyes, without idealism or contemplation, an urgency forcing the decision. A conscious intention that enables the images to express the marriage of opposite entities. Art often filled with tension, stormy, where tragedy can be read between the lines. He has endorsed the statement by Nietzsche, «artists value highly the respect bestowed on passions ». He works using instinct, with an energy and spirit that reflect his commitment and lucidity, and the battle of a creator with his work. The beauty that he loves and represents is not superficial : it is baroque, dark and sensual.
Heureux l’artiste que le désir déchire.
(Happy the artist torn apart by desire)
Enki Bilal is himself, alone.

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