Les Boîtes
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Harper Deyong will be welcoming French artist Daniel Airam in his first major solo show in the UK. In Les Boîtes, Daniel Airam will exhibit an original series of intricately designed boxes, new sculptures and exclusive etchings.
Through his engagement with assemblage, sculpture and objects, Airam is able to utilise the relics of a bygone era while continuing to explore trajectories of playfulness and freedom. His intuitive journey draws us into the magical worlds of his boxes and leads us to address the way humans make sense of non-delineated continuity and remembrance. When speaking of his latest work Daniel explains:
“More often of wood rather than of any other material, each one recounts the quiet fantasy and the benevolent spirit of their long ago use. The pleasure brought by each piece comes from that capacity to establish an identity connecting the image of what they once were, and the sudden wonderment coming from the power of painting, sculpture and collage to change them.”
The very process of assemblage obtains a ritual and spiritual character, silent evocations that create a wider sense of history. Each box acts as a corpus that reflects the essence of intimate nostalgia, memories and impressions.
“Furthermore, the conquest of each box is added to the pleasure of an enigma; that of the end and of a rebirth; that of a corpse magically revived; that of an aesthetic experience compared to the banality of an object.” Daniel adds.
Through the emotional landscape of each piece, Airam is able to explore the attraction and fascination for a simple, nevertheless unique object, as it becomes unveiled for the beholder’s freedom of interpretation.
Daniel Airam is an artist born in Lyon, and he currently lives and works in Nice, France. He studied at the Grafic Art, specialising in typography. After spending a considerable amount of time working in a printing house, Airam left the printing trade in 1982 to devote himself to painting, engraving and sculpture. Airam’s work has been presented at solo exhibitions in Paris, Lyon, Venice, Saarbrucken, and he has participated in many group shows, both in France and abroad.