Curated by Jennifer Teets
With Y. Malik Jalal, Behrang Karimi, Ruoru Mou
Opening on Sunday, 6 October, 2024 at April in Paris.
Save the date, and let us know of your attendance in advance at info@aprilinparisfinearts.com
April in Paris is delighted to announce the upcoming opening of the three-person exhibition, Ceremonial Weight, curated by Jennifer Teets, showcasing existing and newly produced works in various media. The exhibition encircles material discourse, domesticity, inheritance, and value, with a powerful attestation to inner worlding, idiosyncratic myth, and meaning-making. This exhibition marks April in Paris’ second collaboration with the American, Paris-based curator after Conduit House, an international group show held in the fall of 2023.
Y. Malik Jalal (b. 1994, Savannah, Georgia, USA) utilizes traditional craft and collage techniques to explore themes of Black history, power and humanity. By merging materials like steel and iron with an index of found photos depicting Black American family life in unexpected and intimate moments, he addresses the transformation of industries and inequalities, referencing both the legacy of metal artisans in the South and pop culture. Jalal received his MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2024. Recent group exhibitions include The Apple Stretching, Helena Anrather, NYC, NY (2024); The sea swept the sandcastles away, MARCH Gallery, NYC, NY (2024); Go Tell it on the Mountain, Swivel Gallery, NYC, NY (2024); I’ve Gone to Look for America, Murmurs, Los Angeles, CA (2023); and solo exhibitions Bent, MARCH Gallery, NYC, NY (2022). He was a recent resident at Fonderie Darling in Montreal, Canada and has a forthcoming solo exhibition with MARCH Gallery, NYC, NY, to open in late October 2024.
Behrang Karimi (b. 1980, Shiraz, Iran) lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Karimi’s paintings, drawings, objects, and multiples, are extremely varied in style and differ formally from abstraction to figuration, combining multiple influences, including Eastern and Western myth, history, symbolism and spirituality. Tending to the metaphor and parable, his work “is less concerned with recognizability and predictability than with the fragile and difficult moment in which a mood, a sentiment, or a memory is materialized and intensified.” Recent group exhibitions include Stories from the Ground, 9th Biennial of Painting, curated by Martin German at Museum Dhondt Dhaenens, Sint-Martens-Latem, BE (2024); Vagabondi, TRAMPS, La Pulce, Rome, IT (2024); Ghosts Shimmer in Sunlight, Thirsk Hall Sculpture Garden, Thirsk, UK (2024); solo exhibitions Theory of a smell, Ermes Ermes, Rome, IT (2024); Pocket Call, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, DE (2024); Law of the Tent, Melas Martinos, Athens, GR (2023); Dinge Weltweit, Maureen Paley & Studio M, London, UK (2023), amongst others.
Ruoru Mou (b. 1997, Florence, Italy) lives and works between Amsterdam and Florence. She graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2020 and is currently a participant at De Ateliers. Her recent enquiry concerns the complex relationship between labour and international trade marked by her own experiences with migration. She works predominantly through personal encounters, looking at the social structures under which Chinese workers have toiled in restaurant businesses and leather factories in and around Florence, Italy. Recent solo and group exhibitions include On Feeling, The Approach, London, UK (2024); Leftover Linings, San Mei Gallery, London, UK (2024); Cozzie Livs, Des Bains, London, UK (2023).
Jennifer Teets is a Houston, Texas-born curator and writer based in Paris since 2009 working at the intersection of poetics of science and technology, material culture, literature, and performance. She has curated numerous exhibitions and talks since the early 2000s with artists and thinkers worldwide. She was recently the 2024 curator of Offspring: Underbelly at De Ateliers, Amsterdam where she also was a guest tutor. Her forthcoming book Intimate confession is a project is a complement to the exhibition of the same name held at the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston in 2023/2024 and co-published by Inventory Press. She has written extensively for Artforum, e-flux (art-agenda, Art + Education), frieze, Mousse, Topical Cream, SPIKE, and Terremoto, amongst others.