Fondant : in this suspended and transitory time, the Panorama space becomes a kaleidoscopic boudoir of a before done after, of a scene to come yet bygone, of obsessed pleasures of desiring objects.
Confectionery, icing, moistness, fluids, fusions, lava… The title and its connotations set the tone for the frozen show orchestrated by Zoe Williams. Caught in a shiny crust, a honeyed heart is just waiting to spread. The images summoned by this title announce the artist’s recurring themes: taste, excess, eroticism, flames, margins and therefore sexual politics, the symbolic issues of power and domination, consumerism and sexuality. economy of goods.
Fondant is as much an exhibition as a staging exploring the notions of artifice, camp and class through the sometimes forced interactions of the decor and the bodies involved in it: witnesses, accomplices, voyeurs and victims.
Artist Zoe Williams designed this project specifically for the Panorama, invited by Fræme. She produced the works for the site, partly in residence at Villa Arson, Nice, at Studio Ernan Design, Albisola (Italy) and in Marseille. Fondant is the artist’s first monographic exhibition in a French institution. »
Vincent Honoré, curator of the exhibition
Zoe Williams
Born in 1983. Lives and works between England and France.
Zoe Williams’ practice revolves around several mediums including animated image, ceramics, drawing and performance, it is based on an often collaborative approach and demonstration. These elements intertwine to create immersive objects and environments in which a playful and corrosive exchange takes place between notions of eroticism, craftsmanship, magic, gender, hedonism and excess. . These influences blend into each other, allowing the artist to provoke conversations about the tensions of power, politics of sex and the economies of production. Her work explores the changing value of objects and rituals throughout history and within contemporary society. Food also plays an important role in her practice, as a tool for exchange, disgust and sensuality.
Zoe Williams is represented by Ciaccia Levi Gallery, Paris-Milan, and has worked with various national and international institutions, including: Tate St-Ives, The Roberts Institute of Art, London, DCA, Dundee, Spike Island, Bristol, Dortmunder Kunstverein , Dortmund and Mimosa House, London, Le Credac, Paris and Villa Arson, Nice.
Zoe Williams : Fondant
June 23 – September 24, 2023
La Friche La Belle de Mai
Le Panorama
41 rue Jobin
13003 Marseille
https://www.lafriche.org/
