THE COUNCIL OF THE ABYSS
CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS

Alex Cecchetti SOLO SHOW
From September 12 to November 26, 2024
Forum –1, free entrance

Program of performances related to the show:

12 SEPTEMBER 2024, 18:15 and 19:15
Sortilegio, enchantment for two voices, Lili Aymonino (soprano) and Alexandre Adra (baritone), based on a score written by Alex Cecchetti

14 SEPTEMBER 2024, 16:00
The Stories of Ocean Currents, a poetic immersion and visit of the show in the presence of the artist, duration 1 hour

15 SEPTEMBER 2024, 15:30 and 17:00
Dance on My Forehead, Love, swirling dance with François Chaignaud, Alex Cecchetti, Uriel Barthélémi

On the occasion of the Pompidou’s festival Extra!, artist Alex Cecchetti invites us into the depths of the ocean. In this vast blue world that he loves to explore through free diving, the artist creates a reef-shaped scene, where the audience nestles into coral-shaped sofas and jellyfish hammocks. These seats and cocoons, made from natural fibers that mimic the forms and colors of coral reefs and jellyfish, have been hand-dyed by Alex Cecchetti and his team in different studios between Grasse and Italy, in collaboration with plants and other forms of non-human intelligence.

To further express these vital themes, the artist’s skirt-poems are brought to life by dancer François Chaignaud, in a performance inspired by the transformative swirling movements of life and life forms. The exhibition forms a phantasmagorical space, inhabited by mythology and literature, where the challenges of today’s world—ecology and gender issues—are transfigured by Alex Cecchetti’s fertile and extravagant imagination.

In this work, poetry becomes a real place: here, as in the ocean, nothing begins and nothing ends, but everything is welcomed. Perhaps it is with this simple, fluid formula that life itself plays at reinventing and metamorphosing into millions of artistic forms.

Bio:
Alex Cecchetti is a French and Italian artist, poet, performer, gardener, storyteller, and choreographer. He creates environments where the public is fully part of the work. His exhibitions are celebrations of nature, and his performances incantations.

Curated by: Jean-Max Colard in the frame of the EXTRA! Festival
The solo show was prolonged until November 26, 2024

Support:
With the valuable and precious support of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation and La Società delle Api.

Thanks:
The artist would like to thank all the plants that worked with him and his team for the production of new shapes and colors.