Christophe Gaillard Gallery is proud to present the first solo exhibition "Living beings" by the young artist Leo Orta in Paris and at the gallery.
Leo Orta examines form in the context of design and utility. Founded in 2015, the OrtaMiklos duo explores furniture as “functional art”. Existing themes, such as recycling and reuse are shifting the focus from simple use to transformation and imagination. This is the story Leo Orta wishes to tell in his personal practice. Moving away from utility and function, or at least questioning their limitations, are the main lines of this work in terms of the form of sculptures and their materials.
“Living beings” addresses the concept of living in the plural sense, restoring a positive perception of contamination between materials, species, forms, organic nature and industrial geometry. The exhibition challenges the role of these “beings” and how they coexist in a society obsessed with streamlining and profit. Amid this tension, Leo Orta develops an abstract imagination to discuss our production practices and their effects on biological life and its spiritual powers.
His wall pieces and sculptures in space are assemblies, presented as rejects of forms and materials, mimicking the mechanism of speech, as well as the industrial chain and life cycle mechanisms. Resistant but malleable steel sits alongside elastomer, toxic despite its organic appearance, ultra-sustainable fibreglass and pulp, a basic cardboard recycling process. For the artist, the choice and use of these materials create a mise en abyme of the production processes themselves. They recount our relationships with consumption, recycling, pollution and poison. They also make a statement because nothing was produced, everything recovered. Finally, these material combinations reveal combinations of techniques, welding, moulding, drawing, printing and painting, creating enlightened monsters embodying the limitations of a large-scale attempt at individualisation. In contrast, they highlight the power and need for cohabitation and sharing. Streamlining is not nourishing. The desire to eat as a person is not the desire to live as a group.
Nothing we produce remains useful forever. Everything becomes obsolete and yet it lives on or recycles poorly, becoming permanent waste, whether the size of abandoned building or a microparticle. However, this lasting pollution is outweighed by the transformative power of emotions and psychic energies which will always allow us to hear and understand a cow that cries before its death.
Elisa Rigoulet, February 2023
