Fair: Art-O-Rama 2024, Marseille

I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls
by Won Jin Choi

A strange dream led me here.

Once, I entered an unknown house that seemed quite ordinary. I found myself alone among someone else’s belongings and I started to explore. ‘Is anyone there?’ I called, welcomed only by a hollow silence. I wandered through different rooms, coming back through a hallway that led to the living room. There, a handsome cream sofa faced me. Sitting down, I realized it wasn’t real; its lustrous leather texture was a complete illusion. I plucked a peach from a basket beside me; it was too light to be real. I stood up brusquely and I examined each object in the room. Everything was fake.

At Art-O-Rama 2024* in Marseille, the works of Caroline Mesquita (b. 1989, France), presented by Union Pacific, and those of Wei Libo (b. 1994, China) presented by Sans titre, reminded me of this moment. While my body moved through difference spaces, my fingers slipped over the asperities of each surface. From object to object, in this surrealist and ambiguous world, the tips of my fingers progressively revealed their deceptive tangibility.

I navigate in a theatrical and carnivalesque universe where human forms and animals interact, as big as in reality, with their oxidized skins and their soldered scars. The practice of Caroline Mesquita is that of a metallurgical alchemy, forging figurative sculptures that incarnate the passage of time and the essence of metamorphosis, infinitely modulable. Armed with a brass key, I open doors where I no longer know how to distinguish reality from fantasy. Sometimes interlaced with video, her works weave narratives imprinted with illumination and obscurity. Raw and robust emotions are engraved in the material, as is the spirit of the spectator, in a kingdom where the tangible and the ephemeral converse in whispers.

In the hollow of my ear I listen to the particular crackling of the family home. I contemplate watermelons that I feel like biting into, arranged in place of my grandmother’s dresses in a large wooden armoire. At the rhythm of a meticulous task, Wei Libo makes the materials he employs tell stories. Delicately, by hand, in carefully chosen media, his practice creates universes where memories, nostalgia, and intimate experiences echo. The clash of tradition and modernity to which he is witness in contemporary China offers a poignant reflection on a history we have in common. These saved and recycled relics create sculptural narratives about the changing landscapes of identity.

Caroline Mesquita and Wei Libo capture fragments of life in actual size, which upon closer examination are larger than ourselves. Which life do we talk about when we are witness to the contemporary world? In their works, poetry and the complexity of existence meet. Together, Mesquita and Wei create installations that oscillate between the familiar and the strange, as in dreams - or in reality, I don’t know anymore. To know this, one must approach closer, the better to step back.

*The galleries Union Pacific (UK) and Sans titre (France) exhibit regularly at Art-O-Rama, returning to Marseille almost every summer. For the first time, they present together at Art-O-Rama, to celebrate their longstanding affinity.

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Wei Libo (b. 1994 in Lanzhou, China) lives and works in Paris, France. He graduated in 2024 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art des Beaux-Arts de Paris in the studios of Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano as well as Tatiana Trouvé.
In 2024, the artist won the Prix des Amis des Beaux-Arts de Paris (Prix Khalil de Chazournes) and later this year he will be participating in the residency program at Villa Belleville, Paris.
Wei took part in exhibitions such as ‘Autohistorias’ and ‘CRUSH’ at Palais des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2024); ‘Last course’ (with Yahagi Ryota) at Asta-Ausstellungsraum, Dusseldorf (2023); ‘Boxenstopp’ at Es365, Dusseldorf (2022); ‘Hemerocallis’ at Galerie RDV, Nantes (2020).

Caroline Mesquita (b. 1989, Brest, France) lives and works in Marseille. She holds an MA from Beaux-Arts de Paris where she graduated in 2013.
The artist won the 19th Fondation d’entreprise Ricard Prize in 2017 and the Sculpture Prize Joseph Ebstein in 2019.
Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘CuCO & CO’ at HAB Galerie, Nantes, France (2024), Bourse du travail Centre d’art, Valence (2023); ‘Art Club #37’ at Villa Medicis, Rome (2023); ‘Noctambules’ at CAN - Centre d’art Neuchâtel (2022); ‘Noctambules’ at Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2021); Statement with Union Pacific at Art Basel, Basel (2021); ‘Le Festin’ at Passerelle Centre d’art Contemporain, Brest (2020); ‘La Casa dell’Eremita sul Naviglio’ at Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan (2019); ‘Astray (Prologue)’ at Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2018); ‘The Visitors’ at SALTS, Birsfelden (2017); ‘The Ballad’ at Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris (2017) amongst others.
Mesquita’s works are featured in the collections of significant institutions and museums, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; FRAC, Marseille; Artothèque, Brest; Le Plateau - FRAC Ile-de-France, Paris.