The art exhibition / Eclosion mémorielle  

As part of the first edition of the festival “Art Atlas Project”, which is held in the region of Oukaïmeden, eighty kilometers from the city of Marrakech, the artist Médéric Turay offers an exhibition, “Éclosion mémorielle”, original in interaction with the specificity of the region. It is a narrative that is divided into chapters. The narrative is divided into two parts.

– The first part is conceived within the Four Seasons Resort Marrakech, in the form of an exhibition of unpublished paintings, serial. Retracing a contemporary fable that spreads over several paintings. Preparatory sketches, drawings accompany this work. An installation consisting of totems, will be placed at the fountain of the hotel. 

– The second part is a memorial development, an open book divided into seven chapters. An open-air route, which unfolds in the middle of nature dotted with monumental sculptures, installations on the protected territory of Oukaïmeden. This memorial development, activates the universal links between humans, whether sacred or profane

The whole of this production, is articulated around a thematic unit whose essential component refers to the title ” Éclosion*mémorielle “. It is a story that is declined in different chapters, that the viewer explores at his leisure throughout the narrative and which constitutes this journey. The space being without border, a circulation without constraint is possible for each.

Other trajectories or memorial spaces can be induced in resonance, perhaps understood moments of “breath”, because only afterwards does the resonance of the different chapters, culminates in voices or ways to decipher the components of the book.

– Component 1: Memories of the past (EI) 

Within the Four Seasons Resort Marrakech, an exhibition of a selection of paintings unpublished and shown for the first time in this project. Works on paper in the form of drawings as well as preparatory sketches revealing the artist's drawn approach in the progression and intimate projection of his work. An installation will take place in the fountain area. A totemic installation emblem of a force that keeps us alive

The monstration will take the form of a crossing of the dedicated spaces of the hotel. The representations are of a unity of substance, form, and chromatic fields, converging towards the holding of a narrative without concession. The sketches, the drawings, exposed, enlighten the viewer on the progressive and sinuous path of the artist. On tables or showcases, will be shown a preparatory work, via drawings, cuttings, collages, weavings.

The scenic device within the gallery allows an easy circulation of the public. The exhibition is a beautiful encounter with an artist and a group of works shown for the first time, which crystallizes a stage in the artist's career.

– Component 2: Memories of the past (EII) 

– An open-air route accessible to all, is similar to a manuscript

consisting of several chapters distributed over a specific area of the region of Oukaïmeden located in the High Atlas at 80 km from Marrakech

The Oukaïmeden, is a very vast mountainous area, forming beautiful landscapes composed of valleys with rich archaeological remains, spacious, a valley as well as a lake.

These spaces will be invested by the artist to deploy a narrative and project his imagination from his personal history and attempt an experience around time, life, certainty, resistance in this territory that preserves an identity, far from the era of suspicion.

The artist offers his vision, it is a quest, with a humanistic aim which probes the contours of the man in his environment, and questions its components: “To make society”, or “To make alliance”, with the other members of a community. The artist scrutinizes the invention of hierarchy, based on the concept that no one person has the key to judge the supremacy of a given society. He defends a completeness of acquired skills, of a common memory during the existence, in a given territory.

This unprecedented work offers the viewer the opportunity to access an intimate and humanistic understanding of the artist's world. This choice is inseparable from the dialogue and the exploration in depth of the richness of the native population of the region, with a setting aside of silence and muteness. Médéric Turay gives voice, an echo to the different strata of the collected testimonies, without blasphemy, probably for the benefit of innovative societal models of politics.

Through a singular and virtuoso iconography, the artist transposes us into a world where the past invites itself into the present. One hears there human buzzes not gendered; because the paintings of Médéric Turay are crossed of entropy, this quiet disorder, which boils but of the interior, and finishes by inducing movements, relative visibilities which interweave changes of state, luminous spaces… This quiet disorder contributes to confirming an invoice of realization, serial not to condemn the artist to an immobilism…

Médéric Turay's work is characterized by the gesture, and the material fabrication of the work (the line, the drips, the textures, the traces, the colors, the sallow tint…). In terms of subject matter, or narrative, the scenes can split the space into two sections, offering the viewer a reading or listening of an impending exchange between two parties. Other canvases of mixed composition, include traces, repentances, screens, scattered silhouettes, or confined, asserted or erased in networks, tarnished by the passing of time. Other creatures always ungendered, equipped with tentacles encroach on the material territory of the other, probably coming from elsewhere, which, adorned with halo or crowns sacred, resists the call. A world buried in a magma, an environment heightened by remains, which can be linked to residues, artifacts or vestiges.

The artist takes us into the spatial arrangement of his representations. He handles the foreground and the background without any hierarchy of importance. Throughout the realization of his work, he translates new forms into lines, drips, patterns, colors, contrasts, in a modular way it is, in a kind of abandonment, or loss of self-control for an aesthetic engine of his work,

A confrontation between two components of a painting, on equal footing on the same plane.

But the background is always charged with the crossing of tiny or not so tiny silhouettes, reduced to untamed spots in a disordered and noisy environment, one can detect affirmed forms, others evanescent, reduced to shadows. Are they the invisible ones who embody the indifference or the potential threats in society.

The themes developed are related to the human being in his relationship with the other. The author Edouard Glissant theorized it in his book The Philosophy of the relation, as well as Claude Levi Strauss, Maurice Merleau Ponty

The exhibition “L'éclosion mémorielle”, constructed as an appearance, a flowering, an event, a birth, an outcome, a testimony manifestation, by the choice of the place of its implantation is a strong sign of the artist. We can see an artist concerned by the human being, his adaptation and his interaction with his environment.

Spirit of the place

The artist establishes a link and exchanges with the inhabitants of the region. An amplification in phase with the spirit, the people, the place, and the talent!

His imagination populated by salvific representations, between sacred and profane as well as humanistic attractions seizes the distortion between the real and the imaginary, to reshape it in an artistic perception through different mediums (painting, drawing, installation, photography, discussion panel, workshop), and moreover anchored in a territory where is established a culture transmitted by elders to the heirs in order to stabilize an identity how much even relative

The artist intends to establish the link and establish exchanges with the inhabitants of the region. It is an amplification in phase with the spirit, the men, the place, and the talent!

Exchanges & Richness of the inhabitants

The choice of this location is not foreign to the artist it finds a resonance to the story he unfolds, it is an extension of his narrative, with a concrete contribution allowing the establishment of a lasting link and understanding through speech, the culinary and craft workshops, collaborations with women and children, as well as the young generation and its determination in the transmission of their know-how (pottery, tanning …) and the preservation of their identity (vestiges of past civilizations).

The artist intends to establish a lasting link in order to establish exchanges with the inhabitants of the region. It is an amplification in phase with the spirit, the men, the place, and the talent!