Ygrec

Image: Jonathan Potana, Mouvement Primaire (Primary Movement), various items (clock, thermometer, holy water, radio, compass, orange, etc.) on rucksack, 2023.

Co(naître)

Show by Jonathan Potana at the Ygrec ENSAPC Art Center and POUSH
From the 29th of May till the 13th of July 2024
Opening : Saturday 25th of May, 5pm -9pm
Art curation: Guillaume Breton

Co(naître) – Co(generate) is the first solo show by the Reunion artist Johnathan Potana. He presents a set of sculptures, installations and performances over two sites in Aubervilliers: at the Ygrec ENSAPC Art Centre and at POUSH (as part of the group show Nord-Est, Cartographie des Résonnances – North-East, Mapping resonances).

With this double show, the artist has wished to forge a dialogue with the city of Aubervilliers, to work with its materials, objects and waste.  Symbolic and real links between the Reunion Island and Aubervilliers are therefore generated, whilst their colonial past is highlighted, as well as the presence that a continuous migration constitutes on its plural identity. However, the constellation of unfolded relationships in this exhibition does not stop at the surface of our planet, it spreads way beyond the terrestrial atmosphere to bring us near what the artist names “cosmic considerations, primal ones devoid of edges and limits”.

A text by the curator and art historian Simona Dvorák accompanies the show.

[Read]

Jonathan Potana will simultaneously develop a “living installation” on the 1^st of June from 7pm till midnight at the Léon Salagnac Park in Malakoff, following an invitation by the Contemporary Art Centre of Malakoff, for Nuit Blanche  2024.

Jonathan Potana was born in 2000 in Saint-Paul, Reunion Island. He lives and works in Paris and on Reunion Island.

Graduated student in 2023 at École supérieure d’art de la Réunion (Reunion Island), he is announced laureate that same year of the ONDES programme at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Being the Jean-Claude Reynal prize finalist, he will receive the eco-conception Art prize 2024 organised by Art of Change 21.

Some of his shows include: : Echos du temps, refuges du temps, ( Time Echos, Time Shelters) curation Félix Duclassan, Cultural Space Sudel Fuma, Saint Paul, RE (2024) ; Éco luttes (Eco fights), curation Aude Cartier, Malakoff Contemporary Arts Center, FR (2024) ; La Mémoires des Hauts Fonds, (Memories of Shallow Waters) curation Natasa Petresin-Bachelez and Mathieu Kleyebec Abonnec, Cité internationale des arts, Paris, FR (2024) ; Corpuscules, curation Stephanie Meylon-Reinette, Emergenc’art Gallery, Petit-Bourg, GP (2024) ; Quand je suis, quand tu suis ( You and I am) , curation Jean Marc LaCaze, la Friche Centre d’arts visuels, Le Port, RE (2023) ; Acte éditorial Live, curation Pascale Obolo at Centre d’Art et de Recherche, La Box, Le Tampon, RE (2023) ; Où suis-je ?  (Hommage à Bruno Latour) – Where am I? (Homage to Bruno Latour) – curation Élisa Courtois, Hang’art Gallery, Saint Pierre, RE (2023); 3Pes, curation Juan Canales Hidalgo, Centro Joanot Martorell de Marxalenes, Valence, ES (2022).

Supported by the publishing house Ter’la, he has published two monograph editions between 2021 and 2023 (Mouvement Primaire and Mouvman Primèr). He has also contributed to and published with Dokreis (GP, 2024), Mozaik Ocean Indien (RE), Afrikadaa (FR), l’ESAR research review « Magma » (RE) et le Bombas Gens Centre d’Art (ES).