Galerie Quynh is pleased to present Chapter I: Where I attempt to drown the dragon – Sandrine Llouquet’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Alchemy, transformation, discovery and rebirth are recurrent themes in the show represented through highly symbolic images and metaphors. Spanning the gallery’s main exhibition space and its new downtown gallery, the ambitious exhibition is divided into two parts: nigredo (blackness) and albedo (whiteness) in reference to the first two of the four major stages of the Magnum Opus in alchemy. Nigredo is presented at the downtown gallery where objects and images strongly suggest rituals and experimentation. At the main gallery on De Tham, albedo refers to purification and a progression to the next stage of spiritual and intellectual development.
With a nod to Victorian novels, the whimsical exhibition title suggests the beginning of an elaborate journey full of fantasy and drama for our protagonist. References to Jung, archetypes and the collective unconscious abound in the show. The dragon itself refers to personal obstacles and symbolizes the shadow, an archetype that represents the darker side of the human psyche. Llouquet states, “Each of my artworks is a step left behind that shows a building of oneself: wandering, passage from one stage to another, rebellion, escape, rebirth… By pursuing my research on this idea of building oneself, I naturally came to study the history of alchemy and found deep similarities with my conception of art: a quest for wisdom that goes with material experimentations.”
