Infinite Arrows

In the Autumn of 2022, Prune Nourry returned to Galerie Templon’s Brussels space with the exhibition Infinite Arrows, which offers an in-depth exploration of the symbolism of the arrow, which has been an integral part her artistic universe for almost four years.

The mythological figure of the Amazons, a tribe of huntresses who, so legend tells us, cut off their breasts to make it easier to shoot with a bow, appeared in the artist's visual work following her breast cancer in 2016. Two years later, in New York, she embarked on the sculpture of an Amazon nearly four meters high, almost entirely covered in thousands of incense sticks. Like acupuncture needles echoing the themes of ritual and healing, the objects became a recurring element in the artist's installations, sculptures and lithographies along with various attributes of the warrior-woman, from bow to arrow to target. In January 2021, in the midst of lockdown, she exhibited a large work, L'Amazone Érogène, composed of 888 arrows floating in the atrium of the Bon Marché Rive Gauche in Paris.

With Infinite Arrows, Nourry presents a dozen new and recent pieces that extend the ideas she began to explore during the creation of this body of work. The exhibition opens with two dioramas, Arc and Cible, compositions made of wooden arrows and feathers. Alongside them, four other dioramas displaying a variety of geometric forms : circle, square, triangle and trapezium. These works are the result of eight years of personal reflection and the artist’s key encounter with some of the finest examples of American minimalism at Dia Beacon, part of the Dia Art Foundation, in New York State.

In the next room, the visitor is confronted with Structures (Cercle), an installation consisting of a multitude of arrows stuck directly in the wall, forming an army of phantom triangles between the different axes. On the opposite wall, Exit / Entrance, an oak target with a curved shape and an imposing nipple at its center, is surrounded by a cloud of wooden arrows, some of them penetrating the wall while others shoot out of it. A metaphor for the frantic race of the sperm towards the ovum, the work echoes with the difficult journey of conception after an illness.

The last room closes the exhibition with two works consisting of curved arrows made of beech wood and decorated with feathers : Target I (Arrows), a set of curved and concentric arrows that form a black and white target, and Infinite I (Arrows), in which appears the famous mathematical sign for infinity, symbol of movment, balance and perpetual rebirth.