Wilde has announced Alexandre Joly’s solo exhibition, Double Rainbow. This is Joly’s first exhibition with Wilde as a gallery-represented artist.
As its title implies, Double Rainbow evokes the magical experiences of serendipitous occurrences, of rarity and preciousness. Often the phenomenon symbolizes a portal between two worlds. In the gallery, these two realms are echoed by the layout of the space.
On the one side, visitors encounter works that reflect the cosmic realms, evoking feelings of time suspended. Joly has installed a “sound fresco” along the wall with piezo speakers arranged in wavelike patterns to form a minimalist drawing. The accompanying sounds are reminiscent of the wind, the sea, and what Joly refers to as “psychedelic birds.” Three stone sculptures augment the experience. One sits on the floor, serving as a shore or coastal terrace. The other two are motorized kinetic sculptures, consisting of slowly rotating discs within a frame cut from the same stone slab.
Hypnotizing and soothing, they charm the viewers with their dynamic abstraction. In the adjacent room are six glass vitrines comprising mixed-media installations. The series links to a fanciful, somewhat retro sci-fi universe that captivates Joly. He explores the reflections of homemade sculptures using spy mirrors to blur the lines between reality and illusion. By tinkering with the environments these objects are placed in, Joly manifests a certain aura around them, creating an atmosphere or spirit in the intimate capsule. The result is a warm, shimmering mental landscape or a transformative escape to another dimension.
About the Artist
Alexandre Joly was born in 1977 in Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, France. He studied at the Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design de Genève and the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Genève. He works in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2022, the Ariana Museum (Geneva, Switzerland) has mounted a solo exhibition of the artist’s work. He has been awarded numerous competitions, grants, and awards, including the permanent artistic composition of a park for l’Espace de Vie Enfantine in 2019, the Fondation Irène Reymond Prize in 2010, and the Swiss Art Awards in 2007.
Joly has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions such as those at the Museum of Natural History (Geneva, Switzerland), the Chengdu Institut of Biology (Chengdu, China), The Musée des beaux-arts du Locle (Le Locle, Switzerland), and the Kunsthaus Lagenthal (Lagenthal, Switzerland). He has also been represented in numerous group shows, such as at the Haus Konstruktiv (Zürich, Switzerland), the National Center for Contemporary Arts (Moscow, Russia), La Fondation d’entreprise Pernod Ricard (Paris, France), Le lieu Unique (Nantes, France) and the Minsheng Art Museum (Shanghai, China).
