andriesse~eyck gallery is delighted to present the solo exhibition A Terra by Charlotte Dumas.
This exhibition includes two projects Dumas has been working on recently.
Between 2006 and 2008 Dumas portrayed the stray dogs, randagi, of Palermo. Feeling drawn to their individual characters she photographed them in the old parts of town using Polaroid, digital and analogue film selecting just a small amount of portraits at the time. Looking at the vast amount of images anew in 2023 a repertoire of poses and gestures emerged. The emphasis shifted from the individual portrait to the movement in their postures and the dogs as a collective body.
This resulted in the publication A terra published with Van Zoetendaal publishers (2023). Amongst themselves, the dogs seem to perform a canine dance of themes and variations, radiating a comradery between them. There is a sense of gravity and temporality in the stillness of the many dogs lying close to the ground. In response to the book Dumas took on drawing using watercolour. These small studies of observation are presented in the gallery. To Dumas the practice of sketching is akin to finding one’s place, the act of pondering. The gestures and movement of trying to capture something, like a dog that scratches the surface, being restless, in finding a spot to lie down. In Limburg there is a beautiful word for this: sjravele.
Also on view is a work in progress focusing on Asian Elephants that Dumas has photographed in the zoos of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Kyoto capturing them on half frame analogue black and white film. This intimate, small-format series is part of a broader developing project on this subject that Dumas has been working on for some time and stems from a study into the stories of the first Asian elephants who were brought from their native land to places such as Europe and Japan and her own memories of drawing elephants in the Rotterdam zoo as a child. She also focuses on our relationship with ivory and the ivory objects in museum collections, asking how, by way of reparation, something can be restored or returned to the animals from whom it originates. The title Entendue refers to what elephants hear and how we listen to them.
Both subjects presented in Dumas work on show concern the space we occupy in relation to others, individually and as humans alongside other conscious beings, what it means to belong, to a pack or to a species.
Dumas completed her education at Gerrit Rietveld Academie (1996-2000) and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (2000-2001) in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited at Museum De Pont (Tilburg), The Photographers Gallery (London), 9/11 Museum (new York) Huis Marseille (Amsterdam) and at the Fondation Hermès (Tokyo), among others. From June 30, Charlotte Dumas' solo “La Compagnie des Animaux” will be on view at Maison des arts Georges et Claude Pompidou in Cajarc, France.