Genesis Drift

Irène Laub gallery is delighted to present a solo show by Floryan Varennes with the solo exhibition “Genesis Drift”.

Floryan Varennes, a visual artist, researcher and teacher, develops a multidisciplinary practice at the intersection of sculpture, installation, video and performance. Through a variety of modalities, his work explores the failings and ambivalences of our systems of preservation – whether structural, therapeutic or even fctional. His research draws on these alterations to test the concept of care, both within its limits and in terms of its potential. He uses this as a method to subvert the grand narratives that underpin our systems of attention and for examining the forms of consciousness that arise from them. He thus seeks to understand how these systems attempt to sustain themselves, transform themselves or escape the models and frameworks that defne them.

His visual universe unfolds like a polysemic interface, straddling archives and anticipations. He combines two interrelated temporalities: medieval iconography and folklore on the one hand, and medical biotechnological advances on the other. These references, seemingly composite, are brought together in an efort to make different thresholds of reality coexist, whilst speculating on as yet indeterminate bodily states. The body and its environment thus emerge in negative relief, through various extensions – whether attached or optimised – as if they were withdrawing in order to better protect themselves. The result is an ecosystem of unsettling entities: fragmented matrices, translucent equipment, olfactory environments, and ribbed devices, which he accompanies with prophylactic gestures.

At their core, his sculptures reveal how certain legacies are shifting, demonstrate how established norms are being dismantled, and show how patterns of violence are incorporated – in order to better guard against them. Through a process of reappropriation, Floryan Varennes thus repairs a marginalised present, made up of impacts and premonitions. This speculative approach sketches out a counterhistory, which releases existences and forms of knowledge kept outside the realm of collective memory, and challenges the ways in which we care for them.

Born in La Rochelle in 1988, Floryan Varennes lives and works in Paris / France. A visual artist with a background in history, he graduated with a DNSEP (MA in visual art) in 2014 from ESAD TPM and a Master’s degree in Medieval History in 2020 from the University of Paris-Nanterre.

Download the invitation card here

Opening Thursday 12.11, 5pm > 9pm
Exhibition until Saturday 19.12

Location
Irène Laub gallery
29 rue Van Eyck
1050 Brussels (BE)

Discover more about Floryan Varennes