Watch the movie Ricci Albenda
at the Atelier Calder

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Ricci Albenda was born in 1966, he lives and works in New York.

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In his work, Ricci Albenda develops different types of projects: in situ interventions that profoundly modify the perception of space, his sculptures functioning as bas-reliefs in which he presents both the positive and the negative of the forms, and finally, a pictorial work around language closely associating colours and letters.

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His interventions in public spaces or exhibition spaces present geometric forms that come from his own imagination, but which integrate perfectly into the place while creating a feeling of strangeness in the spectator, who is always between fiction and reality, whose usual processes of identification are constantly questioned.

 

During his residency, Ricci Albenda produced a work that he declined at different scales. This sculpture is part of a larger project entitled "Universe", composed of a new series of monumental, suspended sculptures.
The work conceived in Saché evokes an architectural ensemble that the viewer can apprehend almost in panoramic vision.

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Ricci Albenda has chosen to use wicker for the realization in volume of her sculpture. To do this, he joined forces with David Drew, a basket maker in Villaines les Rochers (a village a few kilometres from Saché, where basketry remains a traditional craft). The natural flexibility and solidity of this material, bring a great precision for the realization in volume of this space initially drawn.

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With this project, Ricci Albenda disturbs the perception of the spectator who can enter and apprehend the work from the inside but his perception of the whole is constantly distorted. The sculpture is identified as an architectural ensemble whose scale would be unsuited to a constructed and real space. The spectator finds himself between reality and fiction, his processes of identification being questioned.

 

His work has been presented in various museums in the United States: the Guggenheim Museum in New York, (2010), The Rachofsky Foundation in Dallas, (2009), the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, (2006) the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinatti, (2004) and the New York Museum. In Europe, he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, (S. M. A. K) in Gent, Belgium (2001), the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2001).

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