Ann Craven - Marianne Vitale

The exhibition brings together the work of Ann Craven and of Marianne Vitale for the first time. Both were born in the 1970s and live in New York. One is a painter, the other a sculptress. The exhibition’s title – “Some stars, a bridge and birds” – suggests a poetic scene, sketching out the outlines of an idealised landscape. And it is also a partial and objective indication of what we find in the exhibition. These artists’ works share a strong attachment to their evocative powers while attempting to reduce the images summoned to a condition of mere motif. Two strategies are employed here: where Ann Craven reproduces and multiplies in order to empty the images of all emotional charge, Marianne Vitale burns matter, mistreating it to make her objects change dramatically within an experienced reality. The links to time and memory are also a shared feature of the two artists’ work. Both try to fix time, to construct mementoes before memory alters them. Ghosts of emotions thus run through Craven’s pictures: loved ones and unforgettable moments are metamorphosed into birds, trees and a multitude of moons. And for Marianne Vitale’s part, she summons up the history of the pioneers of America’s far west as metaphor for a genres-based history of art that she puts on a pyre in to re-appropriate them with a forceful energy. Stars, a bridge, birds, a stele, mementoes, a facade, fire, scattered stories, a mechanical memory, buried conflicts, common gestures: art and life thrown together. Yann Chevallier, 2014.