Gordon Chandler at Ferrin Gallery, Lenox

Gordon Chandler
Ferrin Gallery, Lenox 
June 19 - July 11, 2004

Gordon Chandler works in recycled materials, specifically those that can be welded. A hunter - gatherer by nature, he collects scrap metal and uses it to create sculptural objects and furniture. Responding to the color and textures in the surfaces, he creates works for the wall, three dimensional objects and furniture. For his current show, Kimono Series, he uses flattened oil drums and shapes them into Kimonos. Some still bear their paper labels that combine with the patina of well worn surface to suggest a Japanese fabric. Also included in the show are "quilts," in which squares of metal are pieced together in colorful patterns as in a quilt. He is well known for indoor and outdoor furniture and often creates site specific installations for private and public settings.

Gordon Chandler shows in galleries throughout the country and his work is in numerous public collections. Born and raised in Western Massachusetts, Gordon Chandler now resides in Georgia.

FERRIN GALLERY
69 Church Street, Lenox, MA 01240
www.ferringallery.com

Sanyu at Asian Art Museum – Guimet – Paris

SANYU
Guimet Museum - Asian Art National Museum, Paris

June 16 - September 13, 2004

After the great war, Paris decided to live to the full : « After the stress, strain and anger…men lift up their heads once more, open their eyes and enjoy life. A frenetic desire to dance, to buy, to be able finally to walk heads held high, to cream, to howl, to throw money out of the windows. A furia of vital forces takes over the world », according to Fernand Léger. Artists from five continents meet in Montparnasse and a new generation of painters  mingle on the terraces of the Dome and the Rotonde creating « the first colony of truly international artists in the history of the world, said Marcel Duchamp. Sanyu arrived in Paris when he was twenty years old. He belonged to a group of young Chinese painters who had been given scholarships to study in France organised by Cai Yuanpei, then President of Peking University, in tandem with the French authorities.

The years of Apprenticeship : 1920-1930

The Self-Portrait in the Atelier by Foujita shows that other painters from Asia had come to live in Paris. Sanyu decided not to enter the Ecole Nationale  des Beaux-Arts, but opted for the less academic studio of the Grande Chaumière. From this period, he has left us humourous pencil drawings and watercolours of his fellow students. The strokes are assured and often heightened with gentle colours. A group of watercolours from these formative years  is hung in the second gallery facing the early still-lives painted on canvas in clear, luminous colours. Yet his major focus of interest was still centred on the nude, a genre wich allowed him to  express his talent. Hence, he produced a great number of preliminary drawings, delineating with maestria his models as if they were preparatory studies. These fill an entire gallery. 

 
From 1929 onwards, Sanyu really began to paint nudes on canvas. These works can be seen in the two following galeries. Like Foujita, he depicts women horizontally placed against blocks of colour without giving any impression of depth. The Japanese painter fad devised his own technique for his nudes. First, he prepared the canvas to obtain a smooth milky surface on which he then drew with a very fine brush. It is likely that Sanyu drew inspiration from this, but used a thicker preparation, re-enforcing the outline of the drawing with a dark contour as he sought the perfect outline.

Occasionally, he engraved in that juicy paint  surface ornamented patterns exactly like Chinese potters who incise them  into the wet clay. Sparing with colour, his palette comprised black, white and pink. Nevertheless, at that time, he was influenced by the artistic curnets in Paris. His faces, framed by black hair cut like a boy with one gigantic jet-black eye call to mind the portraits of Kiki. As a reminder of that legendary model of Montparnasse, Le violon d’Ingres  (The violin of Ingres)  -a later print after the original by Man Ray in 1924- showing Kiki’s back, is hung next to her profile in bronze cast by Pablo Gargallo in 1928, obvious links between the surrealists and the artists of the Ecole de Paris.

Maturity : 1930-1940 

In the1930’s, a man appeared out of the blue and provided him with an income at the very moment when his family in China could no longer do so. Henri-Pierre Roché (1879-1959) one of the most active art dealers between the wars immediatly  grasped Sanyu’s potential and bought around 111 paintings and 600 drawings. Sanyu, free for some time from material concerns, went enthusiastically back to painting again. Moreover it is during  this very productive period that he succeeded in arriving at an invisible marriage between the western realist perception of nature and the implicit tranquility of Chinese aesthetics. His calm, harmonious and figurative works are enchanting.

Even though he chose more often than not apparently banal ordinary subjects, he managed to put a distance between them and everyday reality. To give an idea of this work, two rooms are dedicated  to group animals and flowers paintings. What is important is not the subject in itself but Sanyu’s ability to transpose it into a poetic visual universe. Horses or cats are shown in natural poses which emphasise their sensuality, flowers in pots or vases climb upwards the light with their calligraphic stems and transparent petals –autonomous works created by the artists imagination.

Sporting interlude and the Post-war : 1940-1966

During ten years, sanyu trained hard at sport. By  this time, he had invented a new game called the ping-tennis, which he hoped would become fashionable and resolve all his financial problems. He went as far as Berlin to show this new sport to the Olympic committee in 1936. Later in 1948, while he was staying at New York, he intended to promote his ping-tennis. He painted less and we have had to wait until the Post-war period to see him working again in his studio of the rue de la Sablière in Montparnasse. His forms took an unexpected modernism : his nudes became both more linears and monumentals (fig.4). He succeeded in detaching them from any context. His drawing became more muscular. At the end of his life, he painted enormous, bizarre and wild landscapes. The vast perspective without limits is staffed with tiny animals directly reminding us of the tragic loneliness of the master landscape artists of the Northern Song era (960-1127). Both lyrical and grandiose, their « language » has already become abstract. Sanyu, as a final metamorphosis of Chinese artist, brought the pictorial tradition of his native country to  the doors of modernity. The majority of these late landscapes are today in the National Museum of History of Taipei, where Sanyu should have exhibited them. Fate decided otherwise. He died in an accident in 1966. We have had to wait for the XXIst century to see them again in the west during the first retrospective exhibition devoted to him.

Curator : Jean-Paul Desroches with Catherine Pekovits and Rita Wong, ghest curator.

Guimet Museum - Asian Art National Museum, Paris
www.guimet.fr

Sanyu au Musée des arts asiatiques Guimet, Paris

SANYU, l’écriture du corps

Musée Guimet

16 juin - 13 septembre 2004

Le Paris de l'après-guerre entend vivre dans l'euphorie « L'homme exaspéré, tendu [...] lève la tête, ouvre les yeux, reprend goût à la vie. Frénésie de danser, de dépenser, de pouvoir enfin marcher debout, crier, hurler, gaspiller. Un déchaînement de forces vives remplit le monde », écrit Fernand Léger. Les artistes venus des cinq continents se ruent à Montparnasse et une nouvelle génération de peintres se bouscule à la terrasse du Dôme et de la Rotonde, formant, aux dires de Marcel Duchamp, « la première colonie d'artistes vraiment internationale qui eût existé ». C’est dans ce Paris là, que SANYU - âgé de vingt ans - débarque. Il fait partie des  premiers jeunes artistes chinois qui bénéficient du programme d'études mis en place par Cai Yuanpei, alors président de l'Université de Pékin, avec les autorités françaises.

Les années d'apprentissage : 1920-1930

D’autres artistes venus d’Asie sont installés à Paris comme en témoigne dans la première salle de l’exposition l’Autoportrait dans l’atelier  de Foujita. Plutôt que de s'inscrire à l'Ecole nationale des Beaux-Arts, Sanyu préfère l'environnement moins traditionnel de l'Académie de la Grande Chaumière. On le voit croquer non sans humour les portraits des gens qui l’entourent. Les traits sont incisifs, souvent rehaussés de couleurs légères. Un ensemble d’aquarelles de ces années d’apprentissage est présenté dans la deuxième salle face à ses premières natures mortes peintes sur toile dans des tons clairs et lumineux. Toutefois, sa préoccupation majeure reste l’étude du nu, un genre où il va exceller. En effet il réalise un grand nombre d’esquisses, cernant avec brio et rapidité ses modèles, tels des épures. Une salle entière leur est consacrée. 

A partir de 1929, Sanyu commence réellement à peindre des nus sur toile. Ce sujet de prédilection est abordé dans les deux salles suivantes. Comme Foujita, il représente des femmes étendues sur de simples aplats de couleur sans réel souci de profondeur. Pour ses nus, l’artiste japonais a mis au point une technique singulière. Il prépare ses toiles pour obtenir un fond lisse et laiteux puis il dessine au pinceau fin. Il semble que Sanyu ait cherché à s’en inspirer, en utilisant cependant une matière plus épaisse, reprenant le contour du dessin avec un cerné sombre en quête de la ligne idéale. Parfois, dans cette pâte onctueuse, il grave des motifs ornementaux à la façon des céramistes chinois qui incisent leur décor dans l'engobe frais. Econome de la couleur, sa palette se réduit au noir, au blanc et au rose. Néanmoins, dès cette époque, il est indiscutablement influencé par le milieu artistique parisien. Ses visages, encadrés de cheveux noirs coupés à la garçonne avec un œil de jais unique et immense, évoquent les portraits de Kiki. En écho à ce modèle légendaire de Montparnasse, Le violon d’Ingres – un tirage photographique d’après l’original de 1924 de Man Ray – montrant le dos de Kiki  est exposé  à côté de son profil exécuté en bronze par Pablo Gargallo en 1928, véritable trait d’union entre les surréalistes et les peintres de l’Ecole de Paris. 

La maturité : 1930-1940

Dans les années trente, un homme va sortir Sanyu de l'anonymat en même temps qu'il contribuera à lui assurer des subsides au moment où sa famille en Chine n'a plus les moyens de l'aider. Henri-Pierre Roché (1879-1959), l'un des marchands d'art les plus avertis et les plus actifs de l'entre-deux guerres, saisit immédiatement le talent de Sanyu et en 1931, achète quelque 111 tableaux et 600 dessins. Sanyu, affranchi pour un temps  de tout souci matériel, peint avec un nouvel enthousiasme. C'est d'ailleurs au cours de  cette période féconde qu'il parvient à cette sorte d'amalgame invisible entre la perception occidentale de nature réaliste et la sérénité implicite de nature poétique de l'esthétique chinoise. Ses œuvres, à la fois figuratives, paisibles et harmonieuses enchantent.          

Bien qu'il recourt le plus souvent à des sujets apparemment banals ou familiers, il parvient à les distancer du quotidien. Afin d’attester de ces créations, deux galeries offrent un ensemble de portraits animaliers suivi de compositions florales. Mais ce qui importe ici n’est pas le sujet lui-même mais sa faculté à le transposer dans l'univers poétique du visuel. Chevaux ou félins sont figurés dans des poses naturelles soulignant la sensualité de la  vie, fleurs en pot ou en vase montent vers la lumière avec leurs tiges calligraphiques et leurs pétales éthérés, autant d’œuvres autonomes sorties de l’imaginaire du créateur.

L’intermède sportif et l’après-guerre : 1940-1966

Pendant une dizaine d’années , Sanyu va se battre sur un nouveau terrain, celui du sport. En effet, il avait mis au point un jeu, le ping-tennis, qu'il voulait voir adopter, espérant en retour une manne providentielle. Il ira jusqu'à Berlin pour présenter son invention aux commissaires du Comité des Jeux Olympiques en 1936, puis en 1948, il se  rend à New-York, à nouveau pour argumenter et défendre son ping-tennis. Il peint moins et il faut attendre l’après-guerre pour le voir s’affairer dans son atelier de la rue de la Sablière à Montparnasse. Ses créations se teintent alors d’un modernisme inattendu : ses nus deviennent à la fois plus  graphiques et plus monumentaux. Il parvient à les dépouiller de tout environnement. Ses lignes gagnent en puissance. A la fin de sa vie, il exécute de grandes compositions représentant de vastes paysages, étranges et sauvages. Ces larges perspectives ouvertes et comme illimitées peuplées de minuscules animaux renouent avec les solitudes tragiques des maîtres du paysage des Song du Nord (960- 1278). A la fois grandiose et raffiné, leur langage est déjà abstrait et lyrique. Ultime métamorphose d'un artiste chinois qui vient de porter la tradition picturale de son pays au seuil de la modernité. La plupart de ses derniers paysages sont aujourd’hui conservés au musée national d’Histoire de Taipei où Sanyu devait les présenter. Le destin en décide autrement. Sanyu meurt accidentellement en 1966. Il a fallu attendre le XXIe siècle pour les revoir en Occident dans le cadre de la première rétrospective qui lui est consacrée.

Exposition présentée au musée Guimet en coordination avec l’Association pour le Rayonnement des Arts Asiatiques (ARAA) et le soutien de la fondation Yageo. Sanyu, l’écriture du corps est parrainée par Radio France Internationale.

Commissariat de l'exposition : Jean-Paul Desroches 
assisté de Catherine Pekovits, coordinatrice de l’exposition
Commissaire invité : Rita Wong

Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet
6; place d’Iéna
75116 Paris

Kerry James Marshall, Baltimore Museum of Art - One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics

Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics
Baltimore Museum of Art
June 20 - September 5, 2004

The Baltimore Museum of Art presents a major exhibition of new work by nationally acclaimed artist Kerry James Marshall. Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics examines black history, identity, and cultural tradition through more than 40 works, including paintings, sculpture, photography, installation, and video. 

A painter, photographer, printmaker, and installation artist, Kerry James Marshall’s remarkable talent has earned him a coveted MacArthur Fellow “genius” award. Best known for large-scale paintings that reflect his engagement with social history, the civil rights movement, and his experiences as an African American, Marshall is represented in more than 30 public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, and The Baltimore Museum of Art.

“We are delighted to bring this highly regarded artist to Baltimore,” said BMA Director Doreen Bolger. “Kerry James Marshall is an important voice in the African-American community, and these are some of his most powerful works to date.”

Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics represents a new direction in Marshall’s work in which he opens a dialogue on the issue of black aesthetics, the practice of being an artist, the question of integration versus assimilation, and notions of race.

“You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955, and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility,” said Kerry James Marshall. “You can’t move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it. That determined a lot of where my work was going to go.”

The term black aesthetics first emerged within the 1960s civil rights and Black Power movements as a way to raise awareness for black rights, foster black cultural pride, and develop strategies for African Americans to participate more actively in the mainstream of U.S. society. Throughout this exhibition, Kerry James Marshall has drawn upon the dense and unique layering of language, music, and art characteristic of black expression to infuse Western art-historical styles with the political and social realities of the African-American experience.

Examples of works in the exhibition include:

- Memento #5, a glittery 9- by 13-foot canvas commemorating heroes of the civil rights movement Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy.

- 7 am Sunday Morning, a monumental 10- by 18-foot painting depicting a street scene on the South Side of Chicago interrupted by the prismatic glare of the sun.

- Garden Party, a four-minute DVD and corresponding painting that reinterprets Impressionist works like Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party with African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics enjoying a backyard gathering.

- The Ladder of Success, an installation of colorful Plexiglass boxes each listing a traditional western virtue—including honesty and punctuality—and principles of the African-American celebration of Kwanzaa, such as creativity and faith.

- Africa Restored, a three-part work that presents the continent as a vast sculpture adorned with medallions that pay homage to Africa as a source of creative inspiration.

- Dailies, a continuation of the artist’s RYTHM MASTR comic series that pits an urban superhero against the Chicago Housing Authority using a combination of futuristic and traditional African accoutrements.

Kerry James Marshall was born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in Los Angeles. He lives in Chicago where he has been a professor since 1993 at the School of Art and Design and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He received his BFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1978 and an honorary doctorate in 1999. In 1997 Marshall was awarded the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Kerry James Marshall's work has been included in such group exhibitions as the 2003 Venice Biennale; the 1999/2000 Carnegie International; the 1997 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; and documenta X in Kassel, Germany, in 1997. In 1998, Marshall's work was the subject of a major exhibition organized by the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago that traveled to such venues as the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. He was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1985. He recently completed a seven-week residency at The University of Texas at Austin.

In addition to his painting career, Kerry James Marshall has been the production designer for the films Daughters of the Dust and Praise House directed by Julie Dash, Sankofa directed by Haile Gerima, and Hendrix Project directed by Arthur Jafa. He is married to the actress Cheryl Lynn Bruce.

Kerry James Marshall will also curate an exhibition at Artscape, Baltimore’s premier arts festival. Kerry James Marshall will select six Baltimore-area artists from open submissions, and he will invite six artists from his hometown of Chicago to participate in Baltimore/Chicago Show, on display June 20–July 31 at the Decker Gallery in the Station Building at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The Artscape festival runs July 16-July 18.

Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and curated by Elizabeth Smith, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, with Tricia Van Eck, Curatorial Coordinator. Major support for the exhibition is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in honor of Bette and Neison Harris. Additional support is provided by The Joyce Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Peter Norton Family Foundation, The Boeing Company, and Loop Capital Markets.

In Baltimore, the exhibition is curated by Chris Gilbert, BMA Curator of Contemporary Art.

A 104-page full-color catalogue accompanies the exhibition. “Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics” is available.

The exhibition originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and traveled to the Miami Art Museum before coming to the BMA. It will go on to the Studio Museum in Harlem (October 13, 2004-January 9, 2005) and the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama (February 3-April 24, 2005).

BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART
10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218
www.artbma.org

Updated 13.07.2019

Sally Mann: What Remains - Exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington

Sally Mann: What Remains 

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington 

June 12 - September 6, 2004 

Drawing upon her personal experiences as inspiration, Sally Mann creates a haunting series of photographs that speaks about the one subject that affects us all, the loss of life. Dark, beautiful and revelatory, What Remains, a five-part meditation on mortality, explores the ineffable divide between body and soul, life and death, spirit and earth. Never one to shy away from challenging subject matter, Sally Mann asks us to contemplate the beauty and efficiency with which nature assimilates the body once life has ended. The exhibition is accompanied by a book published by Bulfinch Press.

“Death is powerful,” says Sally Mann. “It’s perhaps best approached as a springboard to appreciate life more fully. That’s why this show ends with pictures of living people, pictures of my children. This whole body of work is a process of thanksgiving.”

Organized in five sections, Sally Mann: What Remains features more than 90 photographs. Matter Lent depicts the decomposition of Mann’s beloved pet greyhound, Eva. Here, she uses the wet-collodion process, a practice in nineteenth-century photography, to create images that are simultaneously painterly, illusionistic, weathered and photographic. Untitled, perhaps the most visually shocking section in the exhibition, is made up of images of human bodies going through the natural process of decomposition at a forensic study site. In this series, Mann does not shield the viewer from the reality of bodily decay.

 “There’s a moment where you look at those bodies and say, ‘that was a human being.’ That was someone who was loved, cherished, caressed,” says Sally Mann. “That’s a very tough one for me, the whole question of when a human becomes remains. That question came up over and over again while I was doing this work.”

The middle section of this exhibition features two series of landscape images: December 8, 2000 focuses on the site where an armed fugitive committed suicide on Sally Mann’s bucolic property in Virginia’s rural Shenandoah Valley. She witnessed life meeting death at her doorstep and this transitional incident served as the raw inspiration from which her photographic project unfolded. The Antietam series of landscape photographs, made at the Antietam battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland, go far beyond simple documentation of this rural Civil War location where 23,000 men were killed, wounded or declared missing on a single day in September 1862. These large scale images invite the viewer to contemplate the role of photography in documenting history, time passing and death’s sanctification of the eternal soil. Sally Mann concludes the project with What Remains, thirty-six extreme close-up portraits of her three children’s faces seen floating in an inky black atmosphere. While the subjects of these loving photographs appear in stark contrast to the ghostly images of death in her other series, the viewer cannot help but recall the other images when looking into the faces of the children. In this context, her children are “what remains.”

“This project is an epic visual poem – a philosophical rumination on mortality, one subject that no one can really explain. What happens to life when it ends? What remains that we do not see? Who could better explore this essentially unknowable topic than an artist with Sally Mann’s questioning gaze,” comments Philip Brookman, Corcoran Senior Curator of Photography and Media Arts and curator of the exhibition. “For Sally, such an examination of the moment when the present becomes past should be accomplished by using photographic processes of another era as well.”

WET-COLLODION PROCESS

Introduced in 1851, the wet-collodion process is a method of making photographic negatives using a glass plate coated with chemicals. The plate is sensitized in a silver nitrate solution and exposed to light while still wet and sticky, which gives the photographer about 5 minutes to make the exposure. 

ABOUT SALLY MANN

Sally Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1951. She received a BA from Hollins College in 1974 and an MA in writing from the same school in 1975. Mann has won numerous awards, including three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a Guggenheim fellowship. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally and are in the permanent collections of major museums worldwide, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sally Mann’s photographs have been featured in several Corcoran exhibitions: In Response to Place: Photographs from The Nature Conservancy’s Last Great Places (2001), Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry (1996) and Sally Mann: The Lewis Law Portfolio (1977), Sally Mann’s first one-person exhibition. Her past publications include Second Sight, At Twelve, Immediate Family and Still Time. A documentary film about Sally Mann’s family pictures was nominated for an Academy Award in 1993. A feature-length follow-up spanning her career is in development and will air on HBO and the BBC. Time magazine named Sally Mann as America’s best photographer in 2001. She lives in Virginia with her family and seven rescued greyhounds.

CATALOGUE

Bulfinch Press has published a 132 page book with 85 tritone photographs and one four-color photograph that accompanies the exhibition Sally Mann: What Remains - www.bulfinchpress.com.

Sally Mann: What Remains is organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Following the presentation at the Corcoran, Sally Mann: What Remains will begin a national tour.

CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART

New York Avenue and 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC

www.corcoran.org

Exposition Stéphane Couturier, BnF, Paris

Stéphane Couturier - Mutations
BnF, Site Richelieu, Paris
15 juin - 29 août 2004 

La Galerie de photographie de la BnF offre au public un lieu d’exposition et de découverte de la vie de la photographie actuelle. Cette exposition est l'occasion d'aller à la rencontre de l'œuvre de Stéphane Couturier, de découvrir ou de retrouver sa vision de la relation qu'entretiennent post-modernité et environnement. Stéphane Couturier est lauréat du Prix Niépce 2003, décerné par l'Association des Gens d'Images.

Ce parcours au cœur du travail de Stéphane Couturier permet de mesurer l'originalité de sa vision du paysage urbain. La ville est considérée comme un organisme vivant, mobile, marqué par l’emprise de l’homme sur son territoire. La rigoureuse frontalité du travail à la chambre écrase et juxtapose les plans, annule la profondeur de champ et la perspective. Il en ressort une photographie au cadrage orthogonal, dépouillée de nostalgie ou de références poétiques, oscillant entre perception documentariste et identité exclusivement plastique. 

La Bibliothèque nationale de France trouve là l'opportunité de travailler en étroite collaboration avec une autre prestigieuse collection nationale, celle du Fonds national d'art contemporain. Cette exposition offre également l'occasion de mettre à profit l'espace de la Galerie de photographie pour présenter des photographies de format tableau.

Les 28 photographies de grand format exposées retracent le parcours artistique de Stéphane Couturier depuis près de 10 ans. Seront présentées des images de la série Archéologie urbaine (commencée en 1994) où sont confrontés les nouveaux espaces urbanistiques et leurs secrètes fondations archéologiques. Deux pièces de la série consacrée à la Villa Noailles, Hyères, qui a fait en partie l'objet d'une commande publique du Fonds national d'art contemporain, seront également exposées. Quelques pièces des séries Monuments (1999) et Landscaping (2002), dernière en date, complètent ce panorama du travail de Stéphane Couturier.

Une autre exposition de Stéphane Couturier sera présentée à la Fnac Montparnasse du 22 juin au 11 septembre 2004, avant de rejoindre le réseau des Galeries photo en France et à l'étranger pendant 5 ans. Cette exposition s'inscrit dans la continuité de la collaboration de la Fnac avec l'Association des Gens d'Images, partenaire du Prix Niépce depuis l'an 2000.

Commissaire de l'exposition : Anne Biroleau, conservateur en chef au département des Estampes et de la photographie

Bibliothèque nationale de France - BnF
Site Richelieu – Galerie de photographie

58 rue de Richelieu, 75002 Paris
www.bnf.fr

Latin American Art, Christie’s Paris Galleries

Art d’Amérique Latine ~ Latin American Art
Christie’s Paris Galleries
June 10, 2004

The sale Art d’Amérique Latine (Latin American Art), traditionally held in New York, will be hosted this year at Christie’s elegant Parisian salesroom at Avenue Matignon. During a festive evening event on June 10, François Curiel, Chairman of Christie’s Europe and Director of Christie’s France, will conduct the auction. Not only will this extraordinary sale showcase some of the finest works of Latin American masters, it will also shed a fascinating light on the enduring fertile exchange between Latin American art and European artistic capitals. The sale will feature 100 works including paintings by Rufino Tamayo, Wifredo Lam, J.C. Orozco and Fernando Botero.

The French capital especially had a mesmerizing effect on the young Latin American artists that roamed the streets of Montparnasse where Picasso, Léger, Modigliani and many other creative geniuses worked, exhibited and socialized. The subsequent influences of Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism and other movements on the style, technique and palette of these aspiring young artists can not be underestimated and these chance encounters - sometimes brief, sometimes lasting – have influenced generations of Latin American artists even today.

“The similarities between Tamayo and Dubuffet are as revealing as their differences.” (Paz)

It was Octavio Paz who made this observation, thereby also referring to Tamayo’s capacity to capture ‘sun.’ The sale offers several significant works from Tamayo’s oeuvre, including Claustrofobia, a painting the artist executed in 1954 (estimate: $800,000-1,000,000). Also featured are El fumador from 1945 (estimate: $350,000-400,000) and Mujer con canasta de manzanas, circa 1940 (estimate: $40,000-60,000).

“For the work’s force to burst forth, the drawing has to be demanding on the outside and reduced to the extreme on the inside.” (Botero)

Two paintings by Fernando Botero, Los Amantes, 1977 (estimate: $500,000-700,000) and El mariscal de campo, 1983 (estimate: $350,000-450,000), depict his trademark round massive figures, which overtake the immediate space around them. The military uniform on the figure in the latter work illustrates Botero’s personal connection to Colombian iconography, and both paintings solidify his status as one of the most prolific and alluring artists from Latin America. The sale also features a bronze by the artist, Reclining Venus (estimate: $400,000-600,000).

“Je veux, de toutes mes forces, peindre le drame de mon pays, Cuba.” (“I want with all my might, paint the drama of my country, Cuba.”) (Lam)

Cuban-born Wifredo Lam arrived in Paris in 1938. As a Surrealist painter in the 1930s, Lam’s gouache on paper mounted on canvas, La ventana, II, 1935 (estimate: $200,000-250,000), is an early example of how Parisian movements and especially the works of Matisse influenced his style. A later work by Lam, Quatre mains pour un être, 1967 (estimate: $250,000-300,000), represents the evolution of Lam’s style in the late 1960s. Untitled, 1947 (estimate: $400,000-450,000), is another fine illustration of his work.

“A strange thing, this life in exile, when we saw each other every day … Breton, Masson, …hordes of people, many of them young.” (Matta)

Chilean-born Roberto Echaurren Matta worked principally in Paris and New York and was an active member of the Surrealists during the 1930s. His works are noted for reconciling his early Cuban influences with the European avant-garde. Offered this spring are Matta’s Le Cyclopedic (estimate: $250,000-300,000) and Espacio de la especie, 1962 (estimate: $200,000-300,000). The latter represents an otherworldly landscape wrought with internal tension.

Further highlights include Diego Rivera’s Madre y niño, 1934 (estimate $700,000-900,000); José Clemente Orozco’s La cantina, 1941(estimate: $700,000-900,000); Angel Zarraga’s Septiembre, 1917 (estimate: $400,000-600,000); Francisco Toledo’s Personajes y animales, 1970 (estimate: $450,000-550,000) and Tomás Sánchez’s Meditadores y un canal, 1995 (estimate: $80,000-120,000).

Christie’s premises on Avenue Matignon are conveniently located between the Champs Elysées and Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, in the heart of the well-known district of galleries and antique dealers on the Right Bank. The original building was renovated to include extensive galleries and auction facilities, offices and warehouse space, resulting in 4,500 square meters of comprehensive, state-ofthe- art public and office space.

Auction: Art d’Amérique Latine: June 10 at 6 p.m.

Viewing: Christie’s New York by appointment: May 21 – 27

Christie’s Paris Galleries: June 5 - 9

www.christies.com

Dianne Hagen, Galerie Nelson, Paris

Dianne Hagen
Galerie Nelson, Paris
5 juin - 31 juillet 2004

Avec ses compositions insolites, déroutantes, l’artiste hollandaise Dianne Hagen se laisse difficilement cloisonner. Ses oeuvres, que l’on peut qualifier de sculpturales, sont selon les matériaux utilisés (clous, raphia, tôle, plastique, silicone...) agressives, souvent organiques, toujours intrigantes. Ses travaux composites nous déconcertent au premier abord par leur forte présence physique, leur évocation à la corporalité. Les compositions de Dianne Hagen ne renvoient à rien de connu et restent indéfinissables. Elles intriguent, déroutent, séduisent, repoussent, mais il faut d’abord prendre le temps de les regarder. Chaque sculpture éveille d’étranges résonances en nous, parfois issues de l’enfance, ou encore de l’ordre de l’intime.

Dianne Hagen provoque pour mieux nous séduire et capter ainsi ce qui trouve une répercussion en nous. Son travail nous interpelle mais elle ne souhaite pas nous donner de pistes : “Si je donnais des titres à mes œuvres, c’est comme si je les labellisais, ou les catégorisais. Je restreindrais alors l’imagination des autres. Et par dessus tout, je réduirais l’autonomie de l’objet. Je pense que le public est capable d’interpréter les informations visuelles qu’on lui présente. La dualité existe déjà dans le terme d’objet. D'une part, l’objet est une chose; d’autre part, “objecter” est une protestation qui vient de l’objet lui-même. Cela nous renvoie à une lecture qui va au-delà du simple regard.”

Pour sa deuxième exposition personnelle à la Galerie Nelson, l’artiste présente une nouvelle série de sculptures/dessins en 3 dimensions : sur le principe du test de Rorschach, l’artiste reprend les 10 planches existantes du test, qui se lisent à la base dans un sens ou dans l’autre, et auxquelles elle donne un sens possible de lecture. Elle y ajoute ensuite des morceaux de peluche, de tissu, de plastique et ces extensions créent un réseau morphique où l’imaginaire prend le pas sur la raison. Ces extensions sont de l’ordre du symbole. D'autres pièces, en plâtre, sortent du mur et évoquent une difficulté à communiquer, représentée par l’aspect agressif d’un tesson de bouteille ou encore d’une chaussette bouchant un orifice pour empêcher l’autre de parler. Une autre, au contraire, se présente comme un bec grand ouvert, prêt à la conversation.

Mais Dianne Hagen ne s’arrête pas seulement sur ces connotations. Elle se joue de nous en abolissant les frontières entre les domaines: la vidéo devient alors sculpture, la sculpture devient tableau et ainsi de suite. Les objets sont eux aussi détournés de leur usage quotidien: une guirlande en plastique suspendue au plafond est éclairée de l’intérieur par un gyrophare, un projecteur met en lumière une sculpture. Désorienté, le spectateur n’a d’autre choix que de renoncer aux codes déjà établis pour renouer avec son imagination.

“Les pièces ne sont pas que des objets en eux-mêmes ; en hollandais, le mot est plus joli, “lijdend voorwerp”. “Lijdend” signifie souffrir, éprouver et “voorwerp” désigne l’objet. Je ne veux pas donner un fil conducteur, une ligne directrice pour déambuler dans le labyrinthe. Pour moi, l’art est pensé(e). L’objet et l’image naissent de notre expérience personnelle.” (Dianne Hagen)

GALERIE NELSON
40 rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris
www.galerie-nelson.com

Galerie Lalhumière - Art Basel 2004

 

La Galerie Lalhumière présentera à ART Basel des oeuvres du grand artiste concret suisse CAMILLE GRAESER (1892-1980). Camille Graeser a travaillé et exposé en Allemagne avant la deuxième guerre mondiale (études à Stuttgart en 1913, exposition à la galerie "Der Sturm" en 1918). A partir de 1933 il séjourne principalement en Suisse, le pays de sa naissance. Anne Lahumière souligne que "Ses compositions rigoureuses avec leurs couleurs intenses ont un rapport direct avec nos artistes tel que Auguste Herbin, Jean Legros, Jean-François Dubreuil ou encore Yves Popet qui se sont également préoccupés de la problématique de la forme et de la couleur et l'ensemble permettra certainement un accrochage dynamique". En opposition la galerie Lahumière présentera également les peintures de 'méandres' noirs et blancs que Julije Knifer peint depuis plus de quarante ans.

Anne Lahumière promet aussi d'apporter à Bâle, une pièce exceptionnellement grande d'Otto Freundlich de 1938/39 ainsi que des oeuvres de Jean Hélion des années Trente et bien entendu toutes les nouvelles pièces des artistes contemporains représentés par la galerie tel que Renaud Jacquier Stajnowicz, André Stempfel, Nicholas Bodde…