We had already discovered Hanne Elf at the Depardieu Gallery in the spring with her clusters of roses.
Today, on the brink of autumn, summer has passed, the time that roses live, says the poet, Hanne returns and offers us a kind of psychoanalysis of this flower whose symbol has inspired religious figures, artists, and politicians.
These are new works, with the subject still being the rose. The artist presents us with deconstructed roses, a fragmented image of the flower, its thorns, its stem, its petals in a thousand colors. The title of this exhibition: Roses, Despite Everything, is explained through two poems: one by Paul Celan and another by Rose Ausländer.
The flower has lived its time of ephemeral beauty, it is now nothing but dust and void. But Hanne Elf has decided otherwise. The thorns become a work of art, the stem a magician’s wand, a magical and enchanting world. As for the petals, they are the words of the poem scattered by the wind.
Hanne Elf first took us to her enchanted garden, and today, she unravels in a way the dazzling light clusters. Her roses are dead, but in this death, there are two powerful symbols: the thorny stems symbolize concentration camps, one might think of the Shoah with the barbed wire, and the petals lying on the ground, would be those thousands of flickering lights, souls that never gave way, suns of the certainty of regaining freedom.
Thus, the rose becomes dust, it is the immutable cycle of nature. From its ashes, other roses will be reborn. The death of the seed is necessary for the triumph of life.
Thierry Jan
