Lyle Ashton Harris’s second solo exhibition at Maruani Mercier titled “Ombre à l’Ombre” (presented at The Warehouse) introduced the artist’s “Shadow Works” for the first time in Europe and highlighted acquisitions by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Watch a short video of the exhibition here.

Using the dye sublimation process to suffuse images into an aluminum substrate, resulting in highly saturated, intense coloration, the photographic components in each these unique assemblages are composed by Harris through photographically “re-sampling” his dense wall collages, which are aggregated through excavations from his personal archive. Obliquely illuminated to produce shadowy effects, the chiaroscuro of juxtaposed elements constellate a host of personally resonant ephemera, including imagery culled from the internet, archival news clippings, the artist’s handwritten notes, re-photographed or painted renderings of the artist’s work, interspersed with hand-stenciled multicolored polycarbonate gels.

Embedded against a fabric background of repeating graphic motifs distinctive to West African textiles, the tenebrous photographs conjugate light and shadow to produce a fresh remix of figural and abstract forms, embodying a singular visual alchemy that remains unique to each work.

The exhibition also featured two vintage Harris works included in the permanent collections of major museums: The Watering Hole, 1996, acquired by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and Americas (Triptych), 1987-88, acquired by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.