Exhibition

Elias Njima
Pebble Promenade

Duration_ March 15–April 19, 2025
Opening_ Saturday, March 15, 4–7 PM
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Installation Views / Works / Press Release

Gallery Vacancy is pleased to present a solo exhibition Pebble Promenade by Geneva based artist Elias Njima in Shanghai, on view from March 15 to April 19, 2025. This exhibition features fifteen paintings and nine apple-pebbles. With one exception, the paintings depict mundane, everyday scenes—subjects that are not at all interesting or remarkable; rather, they resemble the ambient noise of the surroundings—perhaps only catching attention when attention lapses. But idleness, or daydreaming, is an essential ingredient to the recipe of creativity.

Njima’s decision to paint only what is directly in front of him can be seen, arguably, as a response to a crisis that many painters face today. With the constant flood of representations encountered daily, it becomes difficult to separate one’s own sensibilities from the influences that momentarily take hold of individuals through the consumption of images. Njima suggests that a way to navigate this ocean of doubt is to paint certitudes. In this pursuit, the long-dead subject of painters, the apple, becomes useful again.

In La Peau de chagrin Balzac describes a “tablecloth white as a layer of fresh-fallen snow, upon which , the place settings rose symmetrically, crowned with blond rolls.” “All through my youth,” said Cezanne, “I wanted to paint that tablecloth of fresh-fallen snow.... Now I know that one must only want to paint ‘rose, symmetrically, the place settings’ and ‘blond rolls.’ If I paint ‘crowned’ I’m done for, you understand? But if I really balance and shade my place settings and rolls as they are in nature, you can be sure the crowns, the snow and the whole shebang will be there”
—Merleau-ponty in Cezanne’s Doubt

The title of the exhibition, Pebble Promenade, references the story of the Makapansgat pebble, believed to be the earliest known example of a manuport—an object that was deliberately relocated from its natural environment and preserved without modification. What compelled a hominid millions of years ago to carry and keep this specific pebble? The answer becomes clear upon seeing an image of it: it looks like a face. This resemblance was neither intentionally carved nor an inherent property of the stone itself; rather, it came into existence through recognition—through the act of seeing.
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In art, seeing is practiced by both the artist and the viewer. It is a presupposition of any further response. Yet, what must be seen in art is not its form, nor is its subject, or context, for they are the art’s language, not its meaning conceptually as art. The value of art is in the artist’s intention—or, more precisely, what is believed to be the artist’s intention.

A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention; that is, he is saying that a particular work of art is art, which means it is a definition of art. Thus, that it is art is true a priori (which is what Judd means when he states, ‘If someone calls it art, it’s art.’)
—Joseph Kosuth in Art after Philosophy
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