ADN Galeria presents the solo shows She brings the rain by Ulrich Vogl and Signal faible by Abdelkader Benchamma.

 Each proposal provides an inclusive view around the idea of drawing, understood as language and conceptual frame. Beyond its fundamental graphic properties, drawing is also conceived in the works of Vogl and Benchamma as an appropriate medium to address the notions of space, time, movement, perception and reality.  

Defined as both experimental and conceptual, though paying attention to the importance of formal qualities, the work of the German artist Ulrich Vogl involves different disciplines and methodologies. Vogl’s installations combine, among others, fragments of nature, common objects and materials, lighting, technological devices. Vogl’s works resist to the static condition of traditional sculpture thanks to slight, almost imperceptible sounds or movements; they are produced by technological instruments or by the spectator himself, whose displacement generates the movement of suspended structures. Reflects and illuminations reinforce this sensation of instability. The artist’s predilection for lights and shadows appears in the interplay between surfaces of water, aluminum sheets, ingeniously displayed holes, fictitious windows. Each element contributes modestly to the creation of a subtly animated display which invites spectators to a sustained contemplation.

“Making of” is another key principle, a constituent part of Vogl’s work. The artist shows all the elements used to create his installation, including those that would normally remain unseen: speakers, lights, projectors, electric cables come into view and show an efficient economy of means. The pieces, generally expressing a taste a bit “retro”, are also different between them. Quite unexpectedly and in spite of their function, they show some sculptural qualities. Indeed, the exhibition of functional objects doesn’t come from an intention to demythologize them or ironize on the importance these machines have acquired in our life. It rather expresses a genuine interest for the process of making, the poetry inherent to the fabrication of an (art)work.    

Giving its title to the exhibition, the sound installation She brings the rain follows this line. Three speakers are placed around a hanging mobile, composed by aluminum “clouds”. A spotlight illuminates them up while they balance, following the rhythm of a song’s basses and lows. The music piece, composed by the German group CAN from the 1970s, evokes the dream of a distant summer. (...) In the dawn of the silvery day - Clouds seem to melt away (...) She brings the rain, it feels like spring, Magic mushrooms out of dreams (...). Between a small model or the reduced version of a concert stage, visions of lazy clouds in the sky or hallucinations provoked by psychotropes, She brings the rain proposes an environment filled up with dreams, signs, fleeting memories.

Like Vogl’s other works, this composition has a “climatic” or “atmospheric” dimension. In a way, it refers to certain ecology of art according to which every element, every matter holds a particular weight and function, articulated with the whole. Refusing spectacular effects which source remains purposely hidden, Vogl’s work assume its character of fragile, ephemeral construction. Its variations depend on the changes of light, shadows and reflections, the speed of a small motor or the movement of visitors. While watching them, we can almost feel a breath, a vibration or an atmospheric change.