The Forms of Everyday Life
Material and Abstraction
The forms of everyday life: material and abstraction
Solo Exhibition: Adéle du Plessis curated by Art Historian Finizia Taddeo
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Exhibition Introduction
The exhibition "Everyday life's shapes: Material & Abstraction" aims to retrace the artistic production of Adéle du Plessis (Cape Town, South Africa, 1969), an artist who is a painter, sculptor, or whatever else leads to the creative process.
Through the juxtaposition of works of different nature that find themselves living together in the space of Sorelle Sciarone Gallery, the exhibition focuses on most of the simple moments of everyday life.
"Dried Sunflower" (2020). Adéle du Plessis. 50cm x 60cm Tempera on Canvas.
Detail "Dried Sunflower" (2020). Adéle du Plessis. 50cm x 60cm Tempera on Canvas.
Moments and details
Moments attract Adéle's attention, and unexpected portraits: small movements of objects, sensations, details that often go unnoticed because of the hectic life that most people lead nowadays. Moments that are easier to avoid: people prefer to stay on the surface and not go deep into their inner self to look at their true reality and understand the beauty and purity of the things surrounding them.
"After Matisse" (2019). Adéle du Plessis. 50cm x 40cm. Mixed Media.
"After Matisse" (2019). Adéle du Plessis. 50cm x 40cm. Mixed Media. In a Room with a statue of a sleeping girl by Adéle du Plessis.
Issues of modernity
Adéle's art subtracts the superfluous and places the visitor before themselves. As sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929 – 2007) said, "With modernity, in which we never stop accumulating, adding, relaunching, we have unlearned that it is a subtraction that gives strength, that from absence comes power. And because we are no longer able to face the symbolic mastery of absence, today we are immersed in the inverse illusion, the disenchanted illusion of the proliferation of screens and images".
Detail "Moon" (2021). Adéle du Plessis. 40cm x 50cm. Mixed Media.
Every Day Life
quotidian
/kwɒˈtɪdɪən,kwəʊˈtɪdɪən/
"Untitled" (2018?). Adéle du Plessis. 30cm x 20cm. Mixed Media.
The exhibition's subject is a timeless quotidian, which has to do with the natural evolution of things, a quotidian that contains one's private, working, social sphere, fullness, and emptiness. Her art is sealed moment of respite and reflection. Daily life captured in her painting, sculpture, figurative art, abstract art.
Adéle manages her art to be light but never superficial, imprinting the inexpressible nature in her touch. Art becomes a receptacle a place that, by selecting and welcoming external energies, manages to preserve its identity, transforming them into positive potentials.
Because we are all part of the daily routine, and we are at the same time a constituent part of it. Because we all cultivate that everyday life, Adéle, before being a figurative or abstract artist, is a person. And when her being human meets her being an artist, the miracle of the work of art is born. Each piece of art fits into every day that it wants to transmit.
"Groei of Gloei (Glow in the Dark Paint)" (2020) - Adéle du Plessis. Acrylic on Canvas. 50cm x 40cm.
Capturing time and a feeling in a painting
To express the "unspoken vernacular" with her art, to make the tiny fragments of oneself that do not meet with society speak, seems to be a real need: she paints everything. From traditional canvas to walls, from tables to body casts to floors, and so on. It is a vital impulse that feeds and accompanies her day after day.
"Sketch 27 april 2020 " (2020). Adéle du Plessis. Tempera on Canvas. 50cm x 60cm.
Adéle's artworks are beautifully textured and saturated moments of life that bring depth and colour to any space. They are an archive of still life’s, glimpses of human lives—still images of a suspended time. These glimpses give the impulse to capture these moments in broad and flowing brushstrokes.
"Tea Time" (2017). Adéle du Plessis. Acrylic on Canvas - 60cm x 50cm.
The world she lives in is her inspiration. She absorbs and reworks, which, in turn, she brings back to life in figuration and abstraction in her paintings and sculptures. "Creating art calms the mind and
the spirit," says the artist.
"Sketch of a Leaf Large" (2020). Adéle du Plessis. Tempera on Cavas. 50cm x 60cm.
Figurative paintings with abstract emotions
Adéle distils a universal world and abstract pieces from a container of punctual everyday life. The exhibition of her various works thus conveys Adéle's significant expression. This expression leads to the process of abstraction in her art, highlighting the multiplicity of artistic sources with which she deals: from the use of the line inspired by the artist Paul Klee to the modelling of Auguste Rodin. From her being an impressionist to her communicating an expressionist art.
"Olea Europea" (2020). Adéle du Plessis. Tempera on Canvas. 30cm x 40cm.Klik hier om een tekst te typen.
Back of "Olea Europea" (2020). Adéle du Plessis. Tempera on Canvas. 30cm x 40cm.
And it is for this reason the exhibition "Everyday life's shapes" also wants to communicate all the diversity that her art contains, giving form and unity to what apparently can be mistakenly contradictory.
"Sketch 21 April 2020" (2020). Adéle du Plessis. Tempera on Canvas. 30cm x 40cm.
"Sketch of a Leaf" (2020). Adéle du Plessis. Tempera on Cavas. 30cm x 40cm.
In her heterogeneous works, she conjugates her inner poetics with the outer world oscillating between figuration and abstraction. Sometimes in her figurative paintings, one perceives the need for serenity, introspective tranquillity. Her artwork then pivoted to abstract pieces of unexpected dynamism and energetic, emotional storm that underlines the importance of communicating one's sensations.
"Tempera of a Boardgame House" (2020). Adéle du Plessis. Tempera on Cavas. 50cm x 40cm.
This process is captured using layers of colours, first pastel shades, soft, delicate, and then bright colours, firm strokes, and then again, the abstract, the imaginative. Brushstrokes translate into a sign of Adéle's art and life's automatism.
Conveying the here and now
The imaginary frame of the exhibition is supported by some abstract canvases, painted with mixed media, in which cold colours predominate. The colours create intimate landscapes of the soul, inviting the viewer to observe, reflect, let go, grasp the moment. The visitor should catch the trepidation and emotion that this exhibition's originality manages to convey in the here and now. Only here and now, the visitor acquires awareness of his nature and can look with new eyes at art and ... consequently, the world.
About the Artist: Adéle du Plessis
Adéle du Plessis (1969) is a contemporary South African artist, living in The Netherlands. Her highly textured paintings explore the material as a sculptor would. While her subject is small and ordinary moments captured eternally. Adéle has been creating art for more than 30 years, across two continents. Her work often explores Art History, Philosophy and Life.
Adéle du Plessis working on "Sketch of a Leaf: Large" (2020) in her garden from a sketch she made.
About the Curator: Finizia Taddeo
Finizia Taddeo is an art curator, born en bred within the arts. She studied Art, Valorisation (creating value from knowledge through making it accessible) and the Art Market, at The University of ULIM in Milan. She is currently a gallery assistant in Milan and has also written for AgCult, a news site for the arts and culture sector. Finizia has explored Adéle's work by intimately acknowledging what Adéle as an artist says about her work and Finizia's Italian theoretical knowledge and affinity with abstract art.
The Paintings
Oil Paintings
Tempera Paintings
Acrylic Paintings
Sold Paintings
All the paintings sold in the exhibition will be shipped on 31 March 2022.
If you enjoyed the exhibition, please share it with your friends, family, co-workers, other artists and anyone you like.
All paintings are for sale.