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The WRP Foundation presents the exhibition “The dreamer's anthropocenic nightmare” by artist Jean-Louis Puivif.

The WRP Foundation presents the exhibition “The dreamer's anthropocenic nightmare” by artist Jean-Louis Puivif.

The WRP Foundation presents the exhibition “The dreamer's anthropocenic nightmare” by artist Jean-Louis Puivif.

Jean-Louis Puivif will be exhibiting from June 5 to 25, 2025 at the WRP Foundation, with an opening reception on Wednesday June 4 from 5:30 to 8pm (free entrance).

Porcelain artist Jean-Louis Puivif uses the medium of porcelain to propose three installations on the theme of the Anthropocene, an era in which human activity has profoundly altered the Earth and its ecosystems.
The exhibition invites the viewer's consciousness on a journey through three acts:
First part
At the edge of the unthinkable, on a metal structure, the artist exposes the wounds of trees marked by the events of a lifetime: 6 prints composed of a triptych, a diptych, and four solos, made from bark selected during walks in the forest surrounding his home. A series of stigmata taken “skin to skin” from oak and chestnut species, totem trees of the Limousin region. Moulds are then created from these samples, into which the sandstone is integrated to create a raw piece.
Once dried, the shape is covered by a colored slip, which now magnifies the surface, further tinted by new metal oxides. The firing process rises to 1250°, then cools to reveal the resilience inherent in the healing process.
Second part
On August 6, 1945, a nuclear explosion eradicated more than 130 000 inhabitants of Hiroshima in a fraction of a second, in a show of force that would stun the world. The city's fabric is recomposed on an 8m² plateau of light-grey plaster made from a mixture of ash and strewn with 1,300 sheets of Gingko, 1/100th of the population that perished on that atrocious day. These white, smoky pieces, the color of mourning and fury, are complemented by twigs embodying the charred trees, as if mummified on the spot. Projections of light and shadow on the work tell of the phenomenon of thermal radiation on the bodies, mingled with scattered white dots, the bombardment of uranium atoms. The Genbaku dome, a symbolic building, and a surviving Ginkgo tree remain standing.
Part Three
Who sows violence reaps chaos, a killing field from which life will one day be reborn. Against all anthropocentrism, life seeks its path. The work is born of reconstituted soil, a surface of departure, contact and reconnection, the point of emergence of a root system from which grows a diversity of buds.
In the race towards existence, a specimen comes into view, nourished by greenish touches. The artist holds it up before us as a signal of maturity, echoing her approach and returning to the ceramist's foundation: the earth!
Silence, it's growing (title of the installation).
Far from the nuclear fire that disintegrates, but with panache, the work evokes the silent rebirth of life.
Texts by Eric Boutaud

Details

Dates
4 - 25 June 2025
Price & conditions

Free

Contact

Address
Fondation WRP
Rue Argand 3 - 1201 Genève