(French version here)

Text about the exhibition mykiss at the art center, Le creux de l'enfer, Thiers, France.
Curator and text: Sophie Auger-Grappin, director of the art center.

 

 

Nothing is more shimmering and elusive than the moving and iridescent skin of a fresh rainbow trout emerging from a river. Named Oncorhynchus mykiss, this species of salmonids are today very widespread in European rivers since its massive importation at the end of the twentieth century.

 

In the grotto featuring rough and vegetated rock, Bruno Silva presents a translucent polycarbonate screen covered with pink bands and rainbow reflections. These repeated transfers of patterns from the trout epidermis establish a strange dialogue with the plastic modules, as it happens with the artificial introduction of this animal species into French rivers. In a subtle game of transparency, this sculpture stands on the border between interior and exterior, shadow and light, visible and invisible, inviting the spectator to walk around it, and playing on the dichotomies inherent to the status of the Grotto in the art center : a space between two spaces at the same time natural and artificial.

 

On the way to the grotto, several ambiguous objects invite the viewer closer. First, plastic feet taken from a toad shaped sandbox are presented as sconces on the wall– decorative elements from domestic spaces rendered pop and strange. On the floor, Dixie, a small terracotta dog, greets us. A loyal animal that accompanies the artist in his exhibitions.

 

Recovered by talc and glue, these reappropriated objects seem to have been mummified: their satin surface shows asperities and gives them a second skin. Eroded, weathered, they lose their materiality and seem to evolve towards a new register, that of decor and image.

 

On the ground floor of the Usine du May in the Creux de l’Enfer, Bruno Silva is invited to continue the course of his exhibition. There, he uses the space for circulation inspired by brightly colored aquariums, symbols of fictitious and tame nature, often intended to decorate waiting rooms. Rubber plates used as supports for inkjet print transfers display patterns of brightly colored aquatic plants. In front of these saturated landscapes, 6 cacti– the ideal house plants– flaunt their foam flesh, annihilating the living in favor of the synthetic.