The puzzling meaning behind certain works of art quite often leaves the visitors of major exhibitions cold. People familiar with Mai Tabakian's art are confronted instead by an irresistible challenge – touching her works. Blame it on the visually striking colour combinations, the smooth textures or the soft yet solid consistency, but the temptation to stretch your hand and reach out to Tabakian's totemic structures, flower-like formations or alien creatures, is hard to resist.
A new exhibition opening this month at the Mathilde Hatzenberger Gallery in Brussels is going to invite visitors to step into Tabakian's world and confront them once again with this challenging temptation, while pondering on the theme of cycles and circles.
"Cyclo" - the first solo exhibition by the Paris-based artist - explores alternating phases and cyclical stages in a clever way. Tabakian goes from more obvious themes such as the cycle of the seasons and creation, to disciplines as disparate as science with the phases regulating living organisms, and economics as well, looking at the trade relations in business.
Though her sculptures and compositions point towards abstract art, they are quite often inspired by geometry. Tabakian splits and multiplies, reunites and combines her geometrical shapes to create eye-catching formations characterised by intricate patterns with the duplicitous and ambiguous power of attracting and upsetting at the same time the viewer.
A perfect circle-like composition in pastel shades reveals itself as a formation of cells spied through the lenses of a microscope; her Slices are imaginary fruits that may have gone through genetic manipulations, while you can bet that if they will ever do a filmic remake of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None in a sci-fi key, Tabakian's sculpture-object Little Soldiers, a game of exclusions, will appear in it as the centrepiece.
"Cyclo" promises to be a visual and tactile feast with hallucinatory yet fun undertones. Enter Tabakian's world at your risk and peril, but remember that - if you're brave enough to do so - you will be totally charmed.
Can you introduce us to the main theme of this exhibition - the notions of cycle and phase?
Mai Tabakian: I've recently realised that I often explored in my works the notion of cycle, mainly in an organic way with the myth of Sisyphus, for example, when illustrating the renewal of springtime or when I focused on a cell-cycle phase. That's why the idea of cycle has turned into a thread that leads the viewer through the exhibition; the cycle as phase, or alternating phases, the cycle as a circle and also as an allusion to my Vietnamese origins and to the Vietnam of "cyclos", the mythical three-wheelers on its way to becoming extinct.
How many pieces will be included in this exhibition and how will they be showcased?
Mai Tabakian: On the walls, there will be five different installations (Slices, Trophies, 36 views, The Wall, The New Silk Road) and a big round piece called The Silk Road. One installation of 10 sculptures of my series Champions' League will be mounted on the floor and, on a pedestal, there will be an object-sculpture entitled Little Soldiers. They won't be showcased in a chronological order but associated according to their colours or their motifs. I hope the viewer will have the feeling to enter a strange world which can take on multiple interpretations: is this a landscape of giant candies? Are these hallucinatory visions or psychotropic plants? Or maybe sexual metaphors for young girls' dreams?
What kind of cycles will you be exploring in your work?
Mai Tabakian: The cycle of the seasons is represented in the piece 36 views, homage to Hokusaï and to his series of prints of Mount Fuji; the cycle of reproduction is exposed with wicked humour in the sculpture-object Little Soldiers, a solitary game where at the end only one remains; the cycle of the development of a living organism is seen through a microscope in The Silk Road; the cogs that make the cycle of economics move are dissected in The New Silk Road, a mysterious colony of cocoons, shiny as if wrapped in petrol, symbolizing the new deal in exchanges linked to that precious raw material. The cycle of creation is explored in The Wall, coloured bricks that joyfully mix a purely geometric abstraction with organic forms. The cycle as a circle hinting at infinity, oneness and multipicity, totality and perfection, and the absolute, is represented in the mandala formations Slices, and in the quest for our lost half in Aristophane's myth illustrated by Trophies, strange halves of fruit about to burst into a new whole.
Which is your favourite cycle? And the most colourful one?
Mai Tabakian: I don't really have a favourite cycle. I'm more interested in the process we can observe in every cycle, the eternal resumption of the cycles but also the impermanence of everything. Apart from The New Silk Road which is totally black, most of the pieces I will show in the exhibition will be colourful. I often use lively, glossy colors, it is a way of drawing the attention and maybe to warn of a possible danger behind the rather attractive side of my work. I could draw a parallel with nature: the most venomous and dangerous plants are often very attractive and coloured.
So you do create your artworks keeping in mind the attraction/repulsion dichotomy?
Mai Tabakian: In my work there is often a play between attraction and repulsion. I like the idea of transcending negativity, and transforming ugliness and death into Art. I try to reverse what could be seen as impure in the organic and make it beautiful and soothing, even funny. The viewers can choose what to see in my pieces - is it friendly or threatening, attractive or frightening? - this will depend on their moods and personal experiences.
Though abstract, quite a few of your works have a geometric quality about them, what fascinates you about geometry?
Mai Tabakian: I'm fascinated about the fact that geometry can be found everywhere in nature. The drawings and motifs you can see on my works are often inspired by geometrical abstraction or obtained with mathematical curves. The geometric forms I use in my organic pieces contribute to the hybridity of my work, illustrate the interaction between my different fields of interests - sciences, biology, philosophy, architecture - suggesting a common root between art and nature or between chemistry and living creatures.
Which are your favourite materials that you use more often to create your artworks?
Mai Tabakian: My favourite material is obviously fabric, I don't use it as a material to be sewn or to be pieced together around a body, even a fictitious one, but really as a pictorial medium whereby colours, textures and motifs might have things in common with the painter's palette.
Do you consider yourself an artist, a sculptor or could we even call you a textile artist?
Mai Tabakian: At this stage of my work, I consider myself more as a sculptor who uses textiles in her pieces, rather than a textile artist.
In which ways your grandmother's crafts and your Vietnamese origins have influenced your art so far?
Mai Tabakian: Both really influenced me in the choice of my favourite material: fabric. My choice to use fabric is reminiscent of an underlying personal story related to this material. It reminds me of my childhood's universe: on one hand my maternal grandmother who used to sew and introduced me to it at an early age; on the other, my trips to Vietnam, where, as a young girl, I was fascinated by the abundance of coloured fabrics, shimmering clothes or silk. I don't know if there is something really Vietnamese about my work, but I'm naturally attracted by the way colours are used in Asia in art, architecture and clothes. Vietnam's discreet influence also persists in the shapes that I use in my work, particularly the "lingam", an explicitly phallic standing stone belonging to Hindu religion, in my series The Champions' League.
Do you have a favourite artist?
Mai Tabakian: It's a but difficult for me to choose just one favourite artist because my tastes are very eclectic, so I shall say - and this is of course not an exhaustive list - Hokusai, Kandinsky, Camille Claudel, Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Nikki de Saint-Phalle, Frank Stella, Anish Kapoor - all of them great artists, though really different in their personalities and works, they all have tempted me to become an artist myself.
Your colour combinations and the tactile quality of some of your pieces make them visually striking, did you ever receive any request of collaboration by any fashion house or designer and if you were offered would you ever do it?
Mai Tabakian: I did not receive proposals of collaboration so far, but I would be delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate on a project in the fashion world.
"Cyclo" by Mai Tabakian, Mathilde Hatzenberger Gallery, Léon Lepagestraat 11 Rue Léon Lepage, 1000 Brussels, Belgium, 18 October - 22nd November 2014.
Image credits for this post
All images Courtesy/Copyright Mai Tabakian
1. The Champions' League, 2012-2013;
2. Slices, 2012;
3. Little Soldiers, 2013;
4. The Silk Road, 2010;
5. 36 views, 2013;
6. The New Silk Road, detail, 2011 ca;
7. Trophies, 2013-2014;
8. Trophies, 2013, detail;
9. The Wall, 2012;
10. The Wall, detail, 2012;
11. The Champion's League, detail, 2012-2013;
12. Little Soldiers, detail, 2013
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