GALERIE XIPPAS

Room 1.

Marco Maggi proposes and promotes moments of suspension. In this society where speed reigns, where spectacular images pile up one after another, trivializing and canceling each other, the artist urges a cautious observation of those around us. His video “Micro & Soft on Macintosh Apple,” produced with Ken Solomon, retraces the slow mutations of a decomposing apple and the processes of its fossilization through reversed time-lapse photography. We are immediately plunged into the heart of Marco Maggi’s work, which questions our relationship to time and knowledge.

For his first exhibition at the Xippas Gallery (Paris), the artist traces with precision the gallery’s architecture, defined by constant left turns. He invites us to follow a line that appears simple: it is a path made from reams of A4 paper aligned on the floor. Through his use of simple materials manufactured for everyone’s use (such as sheets of paper, aluminum, apples, or even envelopes), the artist unfurls a topographic map of details linked to everyday life, privileging the micro over the macro, and urges us to come closer to his meticulous objects.

Marco Maggi’s work is an act of resistance. It doesn’t try to be grandiloquent or shocking. Through the observation of Plexiglas cubes, which at first glance seem transparent, or seemingly white sheets, we see interlaced designs of the barren with the abundant, subtle and almost impalpable reliefs that stand out from flat surfaces, the lack of contradiction between the surface and the support, and the interdependence between the recto and the verso. These precious objects reveal to us an infinite and delicate web budding with intimate relationships and the feeling of the sublime.

For Marco Maggi, drawing intervenes when words falter. His drawings become writing and form their own language. The stroke of the pen, which falls between text and texture, explains nothing – only the tension with the reader matters. In the series “The Ted Turner Collection – From CNN to the DNA,” the reproductions of the modern masters are covered in order to leave only glimpses that are hardly recognizable. Similar to a memory, the artist adds layers and obliterates the original image. In homage to media, he covers information and emphasizes, “each day, we are damned to know more and understand less.”

Acting as visual haikus – their meaning remains enigmatic – the drawings merge with the space and form a constellation of scattered forms. Delicately and tenderly, the red, yellow, or blue sheets release discreet signals that meter our pace, functioning as colored stains, shadows, or reflections.

Through his use of printmaking, drawing, carving, superposition, and light, Marco Maggi always intervenes in a subtle manner in order to plunge us into the complex rhizome connecting separate universes. “Turn left” leads us into an oscillation of maps, lenses, and landscapes, whether they are real or imaginary, wonderful or idealized. Marco Maggie takes into account the in-between and the intervening spaces in all relationships by allowing for the experience of multiple realities and highlighting the proliferation of possibilities.

Marco Maggi was born in 1957 in Montevideo. He lives and works between New York & Montevideo.

He is represented by Josée Bienvenu, New York, Nara Roesler, Sao Paulo and Cayon, Madrid. He is currently showing at Cayon gallery and has a solo show in the Porject Room of the MoLAA in California.

His work is part of collections such as the MoMA, New York,  the Whitney Museum in New York, or the Daros Foundation in Switzerland…

For his exhibition at the Xippas Gallery, Panos Kokkinias shows a series of four photographs. If we look closely at four Mediterranean landscapes we discover tiny, enigmatic figures. It is impossible for the spectator to articulate what is happening in each scene. Here, the photographic device is used to observe the invisible: it transcribes the hidden possibilities of everything as if the past and future events were inscribed in the space and the figures themselves. Panos Kokkinias’s photographs exude an uneasy feeling. These monumental landscapes remain familiar. Initially, they suck the spectators in, overwhelming us, before transforming into a bewildering space. These recognizable places are depicted with precise realism: his obsessive attention to detail, the dense colors, the clean lines, and the unique use of light all reinforce our impression that we have come into contact with the projection of something metaphysical.  Similarly, the use of perspective allows us to easily pick out the figures. In general, Panos Kokkinias creates a discrepancy between his figures and the backdrop: they always appear as drifting ghosts lost in their environment, either because they are superimposed on it or because they blend in with it.
His photographs evoke the human condition in all its fragility and uncertainty. The allure of these images gives way to a visceral confusion that perturbs the spectator and raises questions regarding the existentialist conflict of mankind, without offering any answers. In these works, the landscapes act as metaphors for interior worlds.
Panos Kokkinias was born in 1965 in Athens, Greece. He lives and works in Athens. He studied at the New York School of Visual Arts and obtained a masters degree in photography from Yale University School of Art.
His work will be exhibited at Bozar in Brussels in June and his first monography «Here we are – Panos Kokkinias» has just been published by Powerhouse Books.

Hall.

Xippas gallery is pleased to present Bertille Bak and Charles-Henri Fertin solo show.

Xippas gallery is pleased to present Vik Muniz solo show.