Joël Andrianomearisoa: De Profundis

Sabrina Amrani Gallery presents De Profundis, the first exhibition at the gallery of Malagasy artist Jöel Andrianomearisoa, leading the viewer almost blindly through a journey from light to darkness; from the primeval dawn of life to mysterious indescribable loss. In this new exhibition, Andrianomearisoa continues his earlier engagement with the realities of love, their crude manifestations of borderless desire bound up with the most abysmal faces of the world: violence, domination, longing, cruelty, effacement. De Profundis, taking cue from Oscar Wilde's eponymous prison letter (1897), is not an approximation to but an affirmation of the sinister power of love, its élan vital. In this strange journey, surfaces become the warm archi-textures of a condition, in a site of contradictions. The black monochrome is for Andrianomearisoa not a terminal end but a monologue and a diary of personal stories tightly sewn into compact wholes by words and gestures; the universality of sentiments. Wilde's "De Profundis," written under emotional isolation and the endurance of physical labor is more than a testament of love and devotion, it is also an epic of liberation in the midst of discrimination, criminal libel and exclusion. The artist, inspired by the naturalism of the Victorian Age, is keen to describe the complexities of love—and world—as dark forces, following Wilde more in the rhythmic pattern of the letter, through a desperate cry of life. Next May, Sabrina Amrani will present a solo show by Joël Andrianomearisoa in her booth at Art15 London, in the Emerge section of the fair. Sabrina Amrani Gallery will host a brunch for the closure of the exhibition, Saturday March 28, 11am, at their gallery space in Madrid. www.sabrinaamrani.com