Nirvana's Chronicles by Christine Rebet

Christine Rebet, Nirvana’s Chronicles
11.9.2021, 6—8PM
By appointment through 12.1.2021

Figura Avulsa is pleased to present an exhibition by Christine Rebet: Nirvana's Chronicles. This is Rebet’s first solo exhibition in Lisbon.

For this exhibition we assembled, together with the artist, a selection of works around the idea of Habitat. The concept is not only a thread through Rebet’s work and drawn interests, it also re-frames the exhibition space and it’s stratified existence — a former kitchen gives access to a patio where a mysterious well lays, functioning as semi-contained and ramified environment, a water and moss haven. Rebet’s works usually dérive from sub-conscious eco-systems alike and the poetic signs prompted by such pursuit.

Indiscernible from the very walk of the one who seeks to describe the forms, a heuristic procedure, there is a commitment, i.e., the task of responding to the difficulties inherent to that same procedure, which implies, as we shall see, the metamorphosis of the same one who responds.
In A Metamorfose Das Plantas (Goethe), Tradução, Introdução, Notas e Apêndices de Maria Filomena Molder

Inspired by Rebet’s recent journeys in the north of Thailand, Breathe In, Breathe Out, 2019, follows the spiritual journey of a monk as he descends a mountain. His path is transformed by the metamorphoses of animals and plants mixed with architectural and mythical forms evoking the devastation of our natural environment in this era of globalization. Rebet’s film opens and closes with excerpts from ‘Théorie de la Métamorphose’, a text by philosopher Emanuele Coccia which contributed to the research behind the animation.

Rebet re-interprets personal and collective traumas and mixes history and fiction in fantasy worlds. The subjects of her films are universal and evoke not only political reality, but also the destruction of the world, the oppression of human beings, and the idea of metamorphosis.

Rebet’s work has been shown in numerous international institutions, including galleries, art centres and museums: macLYON (Lyon), The Santa Fe Biennale (Santa Fe), Bureau (New York), Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain (Paris), AlbumArte (Rome), Le Magasin (Grenoble), Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai), Parasol Unit (London), MAC VAL (Vitry-sur-Seine), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (Scottsdale), Fondation Cartier (Paris), Sculpture Centre (Long Island City), Moore Space (Miami).
Her works also feature in the private and public collections of the Centre Pompidou, Kadist Foundation and MAC VAL, amongst others. Christine Rebet is working with Bureau Gallery in New York, Gregor Podnar In Vien, Austria and Green Art Gallery in Dubai, Emirates.