MONT BLANK
CAROLINE CORBASSON & KASPER PINCIS  

3 March - 8 April 2017

Your article on Mount Analogue was illuminating to me,” he continued. “This place exists. We both know it. Therefore we will discover it. Where? That’s a matter of calculation. I promise you that in a few days I will have determined its geographical position within several degrees. And we are ready to leave immediately, aren’t we? 
(Mount Analogue, René Daumal) 

dalla Rosa is delighted to present Mont Blank, a two-person exhibition featuring new work by Caroline Corbasson and Kasper Pincis. Both artists are fascinated by exploration of land and skies, although Corbasson takes an active approach working in extreme environments such as the Atacama Desert (Chile), while Pincis prefers a more sedentary kind of expedition, extending into literature influences such as Daumal’s unfinished novel Mount Analogue. Their language also overlaps, as it’s rooted in a tradition of displays aiming at knowledge promulgation, although their take on this iconography places their work in the realm of contemporary art.

“Coal, graphite, iron and copper are really old minerals that have been used since the early days of mankind. I love them – they are primitive and have a special and beautiful aura. It feels like I’m going back to the origin of things and creation.” Caroline Corbasson uses graphite to coat terrestrial globes, to create large drawings and, in her new series of works on paper, to modify the surface of vintage atlas pages. A Cloud Began to Cover the Sun Slowly, Wholly (2016-17) aims to create the same effect of daguerreotypes, each image is covered with graphite powder and - depending on the lighting - it tends to appear and disappear.

Kasper Pincis recent work has become a kind of performance, recorded in layers and layers of toner on paper as he spent the evenings at the photocopier in a university library. Possibly ‘compiling’ information, as the pages are piled one on top of the other, or perhaps just effacing it as the resultant mass of black becomes illegible. But in the same way that energy cannot be made or destroyed, merely changing its form, the visual information conveyed by distinct letters becomes supplanted by a more textural information. In photocopying a postcard of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers many times over itself on the same sheet of paper, the expressive, impasto brushstrokes can almost be recreated, rebuilt through mundane, inexpressive repetition. There seems to be something compelling him to pursue these contradictory ideas - for example the use of a duplicating machine to create an original, uncopiable object.

About the Artists

Paris-based artist Caroline Corbasson works with an array of different materials, from vintage books to graphite applied to sculptural pieces, and more traditional landscape drawings. François-René Martin (École Nationale Supérieure des BeauxArts Paris) observed that 'Corbasson is fascinated by stars, constellations, planets, astrophysics, the Milky Way, with telescopes and by light years. She is equally fascinated by climatic hazards, tornadoes, the northern lights, and eclipses.' Corbasson studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and Central Saint Martins, her work is shown internationally, most recently at Centre d’Art Bastille (Grenoble) and at BALTIC (Newcastle). Later this year she will present in Paris a new film produced after two explorative trips to the Atacama Desert (Chile).

Kasper Pincis practice plays with ideas of fiction, adventure, folklore and exploration, balancing conventional imagery with his experimental approach to medium and technique. Pincis studied at Camberwell College of Art, Goldsmiths, and the Royal Academy Schools, and his work has been shown nationally and internationally, being acquired by collections such as the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry (Miami, Florida). He was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2012 and is featured in the books The Art of Typewriting by Marvin and Ruth Sackner (Thames & Hudson, 2015), and Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology by Barrie Tullet (Laurence King, 2014).

Object mounts kindly provided by Colin Lindley, panels prepared by Andy Wicks.