On October 7th, Catherine Coudert and Galerie Saint Laurent presented ‘Matière Noire’, international street artist Gonzalo Borondo’s biggest exhibition to date. The opening brought hundreds of visitors to the heart of Marseille’s famous antique Marché aux Puces, one of the largest markets in Europe.
Curated by Carmen Main, the show is co-produced by Gonzalo Borondo himself and Italian artist, and his close friend, Edoardo Tresoldi. The three artists have already worked together in Borondo’s last exhibition ‘Animal’ in London.
Matière Noire deals with the dark matter – everything we cannot directly see or detect but allows the universe to exist – as a metaphor of the invisible in our perception. The show is a reflection upon different cultural, social and generational realities and the media through which they are filtered, from earlier forms of representations to contemporary digital technologies.
In the 4,000-square-meter exhibition, Borondo will present its universe for the first time through more than 30 in-situ artworks that include animations, holograms, installations, paintings and videos. In collaboration with 8 international multidisciplinary artists under 30 that were all born before the digital boom; BRBR Films, Carmen Main, Diego López Bueno, Edoardo Tresoldi, Isaac Cordal, Robberto Atzori, Sbagliato and A.L. Crego, author of the exhibition’s dynamic visual content, such as gifs and videos.
The objects found on site are the raw material used for most of the works; they represent the fil rouge for the whole exhibition as opposed to the digital archive of our times. As Borondo has said: “When I entered into the market for the first time I felt like I was in a limbo of objects waiting to find a new life through the viewers’ gaze. A reserve of collective memory that inspires constant search and the feeling of being able to find something unique, belonging to own personal history”.
Divided in 3 acts – projection, perception, and interpretation – the exhibition casts doubts on the uniqueness of reality and its representations, penetrating and questioning the edges of human perception; from Plato’s allegory of the cave to a 2.0 reality which shows a world flowing behind a screen, to the free creative contribution of each artist.
During the 3-month art residency in Marché aux Puces, the artists have lived and worked together, curating and organizing every detail of the show, sharing the space with the merchants of the iconic market in the heart of a disappearing neighborhood, the dark matter of Marseille.
Matière Noire will be running until January 31th 2018 at Galerie Saint Laurent, Marché aux Puces in Marseille. Until October 23rd the artworks are available to purchase just directly on site.
