Guggi. "Time"

After the path we offered you to follow last month, in Penck’s footsteps, we are dedicating our new exhibition, Time, from June 18 to July 30, 2021, to the artist Guggi … visitors of Château La Coste in Le-Puy-Sainte-Réparade near Aix-en-Provence know from him this black and matt, monumental bowl, of which only birds or a few stray giants can discover the hollow that seems to us, when the light of the south is the brightest, to reflect some golden gleams.

There is no longer any question of a path for this work which forces peaceful meditation.

Doriano Navarra invites you to discover the artist’s recent works at the Galerie 75 Faubourg, which could not be better described than Kelly Grovier did in the text written for our catalog: “A lyrical compression of found object, painting and photograph, Time, like time, involves the slow patination of self, layer after layer after layer. The result is something staged yet raw, artificial yet unalloyed, fragmentary yet complete.”

Thus are composed these representations of installations where vases, bottles and utensils of iron, earth or glass are soberly organized. It’s a bit of the Mediterranean, a bit of ancient Greece to Morandi’s Italy which, as motionless as stones, nevertheless seem very much alive before our eyes calm at last.

And yet it is Guggi – whose real name is Derek Rowen, 62 years old today, Irish, co-founder with Gavin Friday of the post punk group Virgin Prunes, childhood friend of Bono… – who accomplishes this miracle in his Dublin workshop.

In the end, this is of little importance, as it is true that composing, sorting, classifying, aligning, assembling, coordinating, are the essential gestures which one day become the traces offered to the contemplation of our art of living. Some would talk about still life, that doesn’t really matter either, it’s all about life!

Little importance but enough for the galleries Tony Shafrazi and of course Yoshii in New York, Osborne Samuel in London or even Solomon and especially Kerlin in Dublin, among others, to insist on exhibiting him regularly since 1984.

So we don’t invite you to “come and see the exhibition”, but to stop in front of Guggi’s work.