Project Room #18 | Paul Maheke. The Purple Chamber

With The Purple Chamber by Paul Maheke (1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France) – first solo exhibition in an Italian institution by the French artist – from 28 October the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro presents the second appointment of Corpo Celeste, the exhibition cycle curated by Chiara Nuzzi (Naples, 1986; researcher and curator, curator and editorial manager of Fondazione ICA Milano since 2018) specifically designed for the Project Room program , the Foundation's observatory project on contemporary arts.

Through his research, Maheke uses different media that contaminate each other, ranging from installation to video, from sculpture to sound, drawing and performance, an element - the latter - that he considers central for its ability to transcend the use of language. In his practice thus movement, gesture and the environment become vehicles for exploring limit, potential and transformation in relation to human identity and perception.

In The Purple Chamber , the artist condenses the themes and research that have always characterised his work within a space of reinvention and meditation: a true cosmology, conceived by the artist as a world taking shape in front of the public. A constantly changing space in which different elements - sculpture, drawing, performance - meet and intertwine with each other while maintaining their potential autonomy. The public is invited to enter an intimate and disorienting environment, the walls of which are covered by lilac curtains that reveal the presence of sculptures and drawings in a continuous game of layers. These include the newly produced body of work The Purple Chamber series (2023) and a mighty wall painting - especially conceived for the exhibition - as well as earlier works such as Sans titre (ombre blanche) (2020) and You & I (fallen orbiters) (2023).

As a whole, the works compose an intense dialogue between body and material surface that punctuates the exhibition rhythm and transcends space-time limits.

As with the first exhibition of the Project Room cycle in 2023 dedicated to the work of Lito Kattou, on this occasion too Fondazione ICA Milano hosts a work by Paul Maheke which is connected to the themes of the exhibition at Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro and creates a spatial-temporal connection between the two institutions.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a booklet with critical text by Chiara Nuzzi is published.