Fræme is happy to present the first solo exhibition in a French institution by British artist Zoe Williams at the Panorama of the Friche la Belle de mai, in Marseille, from the 23rd of June to the 24th of September 2023.
Fondant: existing within a suspended and transitory moment, the Panorama space becomes a kaleidoscopic boudoir for a past made after, the setting for a scene which is both anticipated and already over, for the pleasures obsessed by desirous objects.Confectionary, icing, moistness, fluids, fusions, lavas… The title and its connotations set the tone for the frozen spectacle orchestrated by Zoe Williams. Caught in a glistening crust, a honeyed heart is just waiting to spread. The images carried by the title announce the recurrent themes of the artist: taste, excess, eroticism, flames, the margins and therefore sexual politics, symbolic stakes of power and domination, consumption, and the economy of goods.
Fondant is simultaneously an exhibition and a scene exploring notions of artifice, camp, and class through sometimes forced interactions between the set and the bodies that engage with it, who are cast as: witnesses, accomplices, voyeurs and victims.
The ceremony: the space becomes an atmosphere. Ceramic mirrors with blind reflections surround a bed, the immensity of the Panorama transforms into an intimate space plunged into the void: a troubled bedroom. A huge curtain envelops the glowing red window, glazed ceramics, highly suggestive objects, uneasy photographs, a heady perfume, and a haunting soundtrack by David Aird fill the space and set the scene. Zoe Williams re-enacts the theatricality inherent in her work to construct a cinematic installation in which one simultaneously becomes an actor in a crime scene, a fashion shoot, a peepshow or a fragmented drama.
Zoe Williams conceived this project specifically for the Panorama space invited by Fræme, contemporary art, Marseille. She produced works for the site, partly in residency at Villa Arson, Nice, Studio Ernan Design, Albisola (Italy) and in Marseille. Fondant is the first monograph of the artist in a French institution. |
