At Icicle, five French and Chinese artists exalt the beauty of the mineral

On the sidelines of the major Parisian art fairs in the autumn, the minimalist design brand ICICLE is organising an exhibition called ‘ROCKS!’ from September 22, 2021 to January 31, 2022 at the ICICLE cultural space. In parallel with an ecological and sustainable approach to fashion, ICICLE closes the Year of the Earth with an exhibition summoning five artists’ views on the mineral. Bringing together Chinese and French visual artists – Jonathan Bréchignac, Zhan Wang, Noémie Goudal, Shao Wenhuan and Charlotte Charbonnel – the exhibition revisits the tradition of the cabinet of curiosities, shared for centuries by both Western culture and Chinese civilization.

 

Exploring the convergences between nature and artifice as much as the convergences between east and west, each of the five artists summons the mystery of stones – frozen and immobile forms – in their own way. The French artist Noémie Goudal (1984) presented a series of illusionist photographic montages, while the Chinese artist Zhan Wang (1962) presented a stainless steel sculpture depicting a stone held on a plinth. Jonathan Bréchignac, born in Provence in 1985, offers a series of hybrid sculptures made of natural stones and composite materials in pale colours, and the Chinese Shao Wenhuna (1971) shows a series of photographs resulting from experiments carried out in the darkroom on the mineral matter itself. As for the French Charlotte Charbonnel (1980), she presents several paintings, reproducing the sedimentations and scratches of the stones. Through a refined scenography, ‘ROCKS!’ bewitches with the beauty and simplicity of the mineral world highlighted by these artists. 

 

‘ROCKS!’, from September 22, 2021 to January 31, 2022, Espace culturel d’ICICLE,  35 avenue George V, Paris 8th.