Living matter

"Mark Daovannary questions the substance of living matter through its definitions and properties. He explores the origin, energy and consciousness of materials shaped by nature or by man.

Thus, a dormant mountain and an inert object have a story to tell. Between alchemy, science and anthropology, Mark Daovannary gives them body, life, movement, transforming and personifying them.

He appeals to the inherent animism of childhood. He uses simple forms and universal symbols, a cube, a watch, a tree trunk, to create pure and dreamlike sculptures and installations. This common language focuses on the essential and allows everyone to project their imagination.

For it is above all a question of point of view. Mark Daovannary confronts us with our own reference points, both innate and acquired. Carried by Asian influences, he accompanies his pieces with haikus. These short enigmatic poems orient, disorient, without ever imposing anything. What if the substance of life resided in subjectivity?"

Ariane Picoche - Journalist

The heritage of exile

"Originating from a multicultural family, educated in diverse forms of society and religion, between the West and Asia, Mark Daovannary uses his experience to question how the individual positions himself, historically or sociologically, in relation to others: communities, ancestors, strangers, friends…

By means of literary and formal metaphors, the practice of haiku, sculpture, and the staging of the body as a field of spatial and temporal investigation, the artist attempts to redefine one's origins, history and identity. This process leads the artist to materialize the weight of the imaginary - as in this piece where a Buddhist wish bracelet (Le Poids d'un voeu / The Weight of a Wish) weighs so heavily in the consideration of individuality that it sinks into a cushion of feathers -, at times to show the cultural impasse in which a generation of young people, born to foreign parents, whose identities are blurred - as by the staging of these two watch dials, whose second hands, linked together by a thread, prevent time from running out (Deux Ans de solitude / Two Years of Solitude).

Symbolic, poetic, metaphorical figures, Mark Daovannary's pieces tend towards intimacy and make the body a space of research, an allegory of time that often stops to freeze on an individuality that tries - with this balance loaded with the weight of the artist in family photo albums (Retrouver / To find) or with this branch of the family tree detached from its trunk - de Créer racine (to Create root). To give form to the sensitive, to give consistency to the visible, to freeze in the earth the Pluie de printemps (Spring Rain) to root an unstable identity to be invented..."

Anne-Sarah Bénichou - gallery owner

© Mark Daovannary 2022