SUBSTANCE EN DÉSORDRE

Not far from a very Baudelairian metaphor for life, delicate and yet strangely threatening, Leire’s sculptures seem suspended in a transnatural limbo that transcends time and space while challenging our common notion of sum and substance. For the first time, The Circle of Life (Cybele) and The Circle of Life (Gaia) are displayed together as originally conceived. Representing spring and autumn, they evoke the cyclical and inevitable passage of the seasons, from birth to decay, to rebirth. Suspended from the ceiling nearby, The Colony, a pair of sculpted lights in ceramic, recalls the alien spiders from H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, descending ominously upon Earth. In a compelling paradox, viewers are both captivated and unsettled: drawn in by the delicate interplay of light, and suspension, yet hesitant to get too close. This feeling of strange appeal and cautious curiosity is somehow felt through all the works on display, engulfing the general atmosphere of the show in a sense of warm disquietude.

Not only do Leire's installations create an oneiric world where Nature and tales merge into a bucolic oxymoron of Humanity, they inspire profound introspection. In that respect, works such as Symbiosis, Equilibrium or 3031 recall the strange reality of human existence within the natural world, rooted in contrast and yet in osmosis, precarious and yet well-grounded. This Human existence that is also reflected in Lotus, as maybe the ultimate metaphor of the “Origin of Life” or as Gustave Courbet would refer as “The Origin of the World”, is layered in a suspended fragility that we tend to discard.

The feminine aspect of Nature as a regenerative force is here highlighted by the artist's sensibility, but also sculptural practice, between grounded labor and poetic gesture. Almost pragmatic in the way she perceives the Human impact on the environment, Leire nevertheless lets herself dream and hope for what could be a utopian future “where we live side by side in harmony.” Between a fatalistic vision of Earth’s future, nourished by the rather depressing ecological conjuncture, and a genuine fascination for the organic powers that persist and regenerate continuously, India Leire creates chimerical sculptures that fluctuate between hope and spirit, fiction and reality, slowness and spontaneity.