DENIS SAVARY, Neige de Printemps
exhibition view at Mamco Geneva, June 2015

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Neige de printemps, 2014

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Neige de printemps, 2014

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DENIS SAVARY, Neige de Printemps
exhibition view at Mamco Geneva, June 2015

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Öyvind, 2015

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Öyvind, 2015

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Pool, 2015

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Loup, 2014

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Stromboli, 2015

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Stromboli (detail), 2015

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 Frégate, 2015

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Bound to fail, 2015

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Bound to fail, 2015

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DENIS SAVARY, Neige de Printemps
exhibition view at Mamco Geneva, June 2015

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DENIS SAVARY, Neige de Printemps
exhibition view at Mamco Geneva, June 2015

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Jubilé (detail), 2015

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Boréale, 2014

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Boréale, 2014

all images: © we find wildness

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Geneva, Tuesday, June 30: 32° celsius. Add or subtract 2 or 4 degrees for the upper floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art, then you have an overview of the sweaty atmosphere from the solo exhibition by Swiss artist DENIS SAVARY when I visited it last week.

Like a ‘real life’ nose-thumbing, the exhibition is entitled Neige de Printemps (Spring Snow) and moreover the press release describes the exhibition with a freezing vocabulary such as arctic expedition, white days, icy weather, snow globe, ice fields, snowy summits or even refrigerator. To explain this terminology, let’s start from the beginning, a couple of years ago when the fourth floor of the Mamco – where the exhibition is taking place – was devoid of any picture rails and presented a 180° panorama through broad windows.

Throughout the exhibition, the works – mainly unseen pieces – resonate with that moment, when the exhibition floor was a viewing platform to the snowy mountains around. From a small eskimo doll watching an hypnotic film entitled Claude (2005) which is actually the degree piece of SAVARY, to Otis (2015) the huge blue inflatable creature at the entrance as well as a series of metallic silver bags, the exhibition seems to gather a collection of figures and faces. Although all these presences appear at the same time nothing more than elements of the decor.

Impossible to mention here every works along with their referential visual cues, however Neige de Printemps plays with notions of appropriation, authorship, representation and memory. The complexity of references makes the exhibited works the product of a vital and refreshing experience that generates narratives steeped in art and literary history.

→ Neige de Printemps by DENIS SAVARY is on view at Mamco, Geneva until September 13, 2015

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