The exhibition Horizontales du Plan by Maurice Pefura featured a group of artworks following the artist research on modern architecture and the legacy of the master Le Corbusier.
The Unité d’Habitation created by Le Corbusier was intended to revolutionize the urban housing model through the creation of a building that removes the distinction between architecture and urban planning, and contains both modular private and public spaces within it. In the idealized figure of the Modulor, man was to be the primary unit of measure of these spaces, around which living revolves.
In its practical aspects, however, this residential utopia soon transformed itself in the creation of true peripheral ghettos, located on the edge of the European metropolises. The endlessly multiplied modular units gave rise to buildings devoted to gigantism, in which man – far from being the unit of measure of his space – actually lives in a depersonalized manner; first a physical segregation, then mental.
The exhibition Horizontales du Plan exclusively presented a site-specific installation that depicts the structural skeleton of the Unité d’Habitation, as if it were a modern altar raised to modern architecture, with the flow of spectators channeled around the work to mimic the motion of a religious procession. However, the artist, hides the urban conflict drama to the viewer eye, spreading just few traces into his works and presenting different layers of meaning.
Maurice Pefura was born in Paris to Cameroonian parents, he lives and works in Milan. He is an architect by training but has always centered his work on painting and installations. His research is focused on the relationship between the body and the space; that of the inner and the outer, the physical, that we are invited to share, with a particular focus on city suburbs.
His work has been exhibited in several solo and group shows around the world, including: Afrique Capitales, La Villette, Paris, France (2017); The White Hunter, FM Centro per l’arte contemporanea, Milan, italy; The City in the Blue Daylight Dakar Biennal 2016, Dakar, Senegal; Heaven, Hell, Purgatory. The Divine Comedy from the perspective of contemporary african artists, Smithsonian Museum, Washington D.C, USA (2015); Nos Voyages immobile, Skoto Gallery, New York, USA (2015).
The exhibition took place at C-Gallery, Milan, from January to March 2018.
Raffaella Carillo Art Curator 