Chine : Galeries Art Contemporain, Art Paris Art Fair 2014

Chine : Galeries d'art contemporain
Art Paris Art Fair 2014, Grand Palais, Paris

Comme nous l'avons déjà annoncé sur Wanafoto, la Chine est l’invitée d’honneur de ART PARIS ART FAIR 2014 qui se tiendra du 27 au 30 mars au Grand Palais. Située au centre du salon, la platforme Chine accueille 8 galeries chinoises venues de Beijing, Hong Kong et Shanghai.

10 CHANCERY LANE GALLERY, Hong Kong, Stand F11 
www.10chancerylanegallery.com
Direction : Katie de Tilly

Artistes exposés : Keping Wang (1949), Gang Zhao (1961), Guorui Shi (1964), Xiao Lu (1962), Rui Huang (1952), Jian Pan (1975), Jing Ren (1975), Zheluo Xiao (1983).

Shi Guorui

Gullin - 5-8 décembre 2011

Technique : unique camera obscura, gelatin silver print, 137x210cm

La galerie met en avant trois artistes du mouvement non-conformiste chinois « Les Etoiles », créé en 1979 pour libérer l’art en Chine : Wang Keping (sculpture), Huang Rui (peinture, installation et performance) et Zhao Gang (peinture), ainsi que les nouveaux talents : Shi Guorui, photographe qui travaille à la « camera obscura », le peintre Pan Jian, qui représente une nouvelle génération plus pensive et introvertie que ses prédécesseurs. 

BEAUTIFUL ASSET ART PROJECT, Beijing (Pékin), Stand G1 
www.bafund.cn
Direction : Yi Dong

Artistes exposés : Li Hua (1984), Huang Hankang (1977), Liu Zhengyong (1980), Tao Na (1980), Wu Jianan (1980), Yang Xun (1981), Zhou Xin (1977).

Hua Li

Case Travel No.12 - 2013

Technique : peinture, technique mixte

La galerie présente de jeunes artistes reflétant l’art actuel en Chine et met l’accent sur Li Hua distingué récemment par le jury du CYAP (Chinese Young Artist Project). La ville et le chaos urbain constituent le point de départ du travail de Li Hua. Ses oeuvres abondent en accidents routiers, en maisons effondrées et en dommages causés par l’homme et elles soulèvent le problème de la deshumanisation des mégapoles chinoises. 

BLINDSPOT GALLERY, Hong Kong, Stand G29 
www.blindspotgallery.com
Direction : Mimi Chun

Artistes exposés : Anothermountainman (1964), Zhang Xiao (1981), South Siu Nam HO (1984), Lei Han (1967), Jiang Pengyi (1977), Rong Rong & Inri (1968).

Jiang Pengyi

Everything Illuminates No.10 - 2012

Technique : archival inkjet print,

Edition of 5 + 2APs, 171x240cm

Galerie spécialisée dans la photographie contemporaine chinoise, Blindspot Gallery présente des artistes de différentes générations. Rong Rong (né en 1968) est l’un des plus grands photographes contemporains chinois. Sa série, East Village, qui documente les performances des artistes de cette communauté reste une oeuvre clé de l‘art contemporain en Chine. Le duo Anothermountainman qui a représenté Hong Kong à la 51e Biennale de Venise en 2005, présente sa série Lanwei sur les chantiers avortés en Asie. Jiang Pengyi, qui a reçu en 2009 le Tierney Fellowship Award, montre sa dernière création inédite en France Everything Illuminates, qui combine le paysage urbain et la manipulation digitale à une approche introspective et une micro observation des objets inanimés du quotidien. 

IFA GALLERY, Bruxelles / Shanghai, Stand F10 
www.ifa-gallery.com
Direction : Alexis Kouzmine-Karavaïeff

Ifa Gallery présente quatre artistes autour du thème Noir & Blanc décliné à travers différents médias : peinture à l’encre, photographie, installation, vidéo.… Références à la culture chinoise et à son questionnement, beauté des formes et symbolisme sont les liens qui unissent les oeuvres présentées. L’ensemble crée un univers où l’encre et son versant symbolique - le noir - deviennent de nouveaux outils artistiques que se réapproprie de manière inattendue l’avantgarde chinoise. Jiang Shanqing dépeint un monde abstrait à l’encre de Chine proche des oeuvres traditionnelles.

Dai Guangyu

Parents 1 - 2012

Technique : Peinture, oeuvre sur papier, mixed media, 85x85cm

Dai Guangyu utilise des techniques traditionnelles pour développer des représentations plus conceptuelles. Wu Junyong évoque à travers ses dessins et vidéos d’animation, un monde intemporel et humoristique. Les Gao Brothers, Gao Zhen et Gao Qiang, analysent l’évolution de la société chinoise au moyen de la photographie.

ISLAND6 ARTS CENTER, Hong Kong / Shanghaï, Stand G3 
www.island6.org
Direction : Thomas Charvériat

Island6 présente le travail du collectif artistique Liu Dao.

Liu Dao

Serious Shenanigans - 2013

Technique : technique mixte, LED, 103x103x5cm

Fondé à Shanghai en 2007 par le curator/artiste Thomas Charvériat, Liu Dao regroupe des artistes provenant de disciplines diverses dans le but de créer des oeuvres associant les dernières technologies (LED, vidéo) avec des techniques traditionnelles chinoises (découpe de papier, sculpture, papier de riz). Exposées internationalement dans des lieux reconnus tels, que le Rockbund Art Museum de Shanghai ou encore les espaces culturels Louis Vuitton de Taipei et Macao, les oeuvres de Liu Dao font partie de nombreuses collections telles que la White Rabbit Collection de Sidney ou encore la fondation K11.

M97 GALLERY, Shanghai, Stand F12 
www.m97gallery.com
Direction : Steven Harris

Artistes exposés : Wang Ningde (1972), Chi Peng (1981), Luo Dan (1968), Huang Xiaoliang (1985), Adou (1973), Lu Yanpeng (1984).

Luo Dan

Simple Song N°64 : Road - 2012

Technique : photographie, tirage à partir d’une plaque de collodion humide, 21x30cm

Galerie spécialisée en photographie, M97 Gallery présente : Luo Dan et sa série de portraits Simple Song, réalisée à partir d’une plaque de collodion humide (technique du 19e siècle), sur une communauté isolée dans la région du Yunan. Xiaoliang Huang, une star montante dans le milieu de l’art et de la photographie chinoise, dont l’oeuvre incorpore ombres et projections de lumière pour créer des scènes dramatiques. Enfin une dernière édition exclusive de l’hommage fait par Chi Peng à la Tour Eiffel. 

RED BRIDGE GALLERY, Shanghai, Stand G3 
www.redbridge.com.cn
Direction : Albert Dou

Artistes exposés : Yuxing Huang (1975), Shenyi Lou (1972), Shui Po (1982), Zhigang Tang (1959), Liu Wei (1965).

Liu Wei 

Portrait - 2009 

Technique : acrylique sur papier, 55x72cm 

Red Bridge Gallery, fondée en 2005, présente un ensemble d’oeuvres parmi les plus importantes à ce jour de Tang Zhigang, Liu Wei, Lou Shenyi, Huang Yuxing et Po Shui. Ces artistes reflètent les tendances de l’art contemporain en Chine. La galerie montre en particulier un triptyque de Liu Wei, variation ironique autour d’un tableau de Van Gogh. Il diffère du tableau de Van Gogh par la fluidité et la légèreté de sa touche. Dans cette ré-interprétation, le sens construction solide de Van Gogh est comme dilué, pour faire place à un principe de représentation emprunt de philosophie orientale qui tend à révéler l’essence grâce à des formes épurées.

XIN DONG CHENG GALLERY, Beijing (Pékin), Stand F13 
www.chengxingdong.com
Direction : Xin Dong Cheng

Artistes chinois exposés : Wang Ningde (1972), Feng Zhengjie (1968), Jianmin Shi (1962), Luan Xiaojie (1958), Bu Di (1970), Guo Bin (1986), Xun Yang (1981).

Wang Ningde

Some Days N°72 - 2009

Technique : photographie, 160x120cm

La galerie Xin Dong Cheng présente des pièces, d’artistes chinois célèbres comme Yue Minjun, leader du mouvement des Réalisme Cynique, Feng Zhengjie, leader, du mouvement Kitsch, ou encore Wang Ningde, un des leaders de l’art photographique en Chine. La galerie montre également une pièce produite spécifiquement pour la foire par Bu Di, artiste fasciné par le Boudhisme et la culture classique asiatique.

ART PARIS ART FAIR 2014 (www.artparis.com) accueille également pour la première fois une collection privée française qui dévoilera un ensemble inédit d’oeuvres d’artistes marquants de la scène chinoise : Gao Brothers, Liu Wei, Tang Zhiang, Wang Guangy, Zhang Xiao Gang…

Zang Xiao Gang 

David Caméo, directeur général des Arts Décoratifs

Nomination de David Caméo à la direction générale des Arts Décoratifs 

Dans un communiqué de presse, Aurélie Filippetti, ministre de la Culture et de la Communication, se réjouit de la nomination de David Caméo, actuellement directeur général de la Cité de la céramique - Sèvres & Limoges à la direction générale des Arts Décoratifs.

Il succède à Marie-Liesse Baudrez, administrateur civil hors classe, qui a assuré la direction générale de cette prestigieuse institution créée en 1882. 

Les Arts Décoratifs regroupent le musée des Arts décoratifs, le musée Nissim de Camondo, la bibliothèque des Arts décoratifs, l’École Camondo et les Ateliers de pratique artistique du Carrousel.

Durant son mandat, Marie-Liesse Baudrez a travaillé en étroite harmonie avec les présidents successifs des Arts Décoratifs Hélène David-Weill et Jean-Jacques Aillagon. La Ministre salue à cette occasion le bilan de Marie-Liesse Baudrez à la tête des Arts Décoratifs depuis 2009 où elle a réussi à valoriser la diversité des activités de l'établissement et à développer la fréquentation des musées des Arts décoratifs portée notamment par le succès des expositions temporaires comme "Goudemalion", la rétrospective de Jean-Paul Goude en 2012 et "Momentané", l'exposition des designers Ronan et Erwan Bouroullec en 2013.

Lui succédera David Caméo, inspecteur général à la création et aux enseignements artistiques. Il a été chef de service à la Délégation aux arts plastiques avant d'être conseiller technique dans les cabinets de Catherine Trautmann et de Catherine Tasca puis conseiller culture au cabinet du Premier Ministre Lionel Jospin. Nommé à la direction de la Manufacture de Sèvres en 2003, David Caméo a donné un nouvel élan à sa production en renforçant la création contemporaine. Il a su créer des synergies nouvelles entre la Manufacture et le Musée national de Céramique réunis en 2010 dans l’établissement public Sèvres - Cité de la Céramique dont il prend la direction générale. En 2012, le musée national Adrien Dubouché à Limoges intègre l'établissement public et contribue au développement d’un réseau national en matière de céramique et d’arts du feu.

Le directeur général mettra en œuvre la stratégie de développement définie par le Conseil d'administration en accord avec le ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Il aura pour mandat d'inscrire pleinement les Arts Décoratifs dans un environnement institutionnel national et international en s'appuyant sur les collections nationales de design, de mode et d'arts décoratifs et de développer les ressources propres permettant d'améliorer le rayonnement de l'institution.

La Ministre salue à ce titre la dynamique impulsée par Bruno Roger, Président des Arts Décoratifs depuis septembre 2013, à la fois en termes d'ambition culturelle de l'institution et de gestion de l'association. 

Expo Georges Rousse, Lyon, Le Plateau

Georges Rousse : Utopies partagées 
Le Plateau, Lyon 
4 avril - 26 juillet 2014 

Le Plateau, l’espace d’exposition du Conseil régional de Rhône-Alpes, présente « Utopies partagées » de Georges Rousse du 4 avril au 26 juillet. 

Organisée en cinq espaces, « Utopies partagées » propose les oeuvres du photographe français réalisées entre 1982 et 2014 : photographies de bâtiments promis à la démolition ou en reconversion en Rhône-Alpes, les réalisations de Palerme, Houston ou encore Montréal mais aussi esquisses, dessins préparatoires, carnets de voyage et vidéos qui complètent ce dispositif photographique.

L’un des espaces est également entièrement dédié à l’oeuvre inédite de Georges Rousse réalisée en janvier 2014 en Inde, dans un des plus grands bidonvilles de Bombay, Shivaji Nagar, avec la complicité de cinq jeunes Rhônalpins et Indiens en insertion. Sur le plateau sera reproduit à l’identique le lieu de réalisation de son oeuvre, intégrant une nouvelle anamorphose. 

« L'exposition au Plateau montrera les oeuvres que j'ai réalisées en région Rhône-Alpes, dont certaines sont le début de séries importantes dans mon évolution plastique. Il se trouve que j'ai travaillé un certain nombre de ces projets avec des jeunes en difficultés ou en insertion de la région et qu'ensemble nous avons fait plusieurs installations à l'étranger, en Italie à Palerme, aux Etats-Unis à Houston. J'ai voulu rassembler tout ce travail afin de montrer que l'art peut être un outil pédagogique d'une grande efficacité.

Avec un ancien éducateur social, nous avions rêvé d'un projet en Inde. Et le projet s'est réalisé cette année, en janvier, avec des jeunes lyonnais volontaires et des jeunes indiens dans un des plus grands slums de Bombay, Shivaji Nagar. Avec l'aide de l'ONG indienne APNALAYA, implantée dans le bidonville, nous avons créé, dans son local, une première oeuvre déclinée en quatre différentes versions. Dans le même temps et le même lieu se déroulait un atelier pour les tout-petits afin d'être tous rassemblés dans un même mouvement plastique et créatif, estompant les différences de culture et les barrières du langage.

Une deuxième installation a été réalisée en parallèle au Sud de la ville, dans des immeubles où ont été rassemblées les familles d'un ancien bidonville et où les conditions de vie restent très précaires.

Jouant avec l'idée que la photographie est un outil de reproduction, le local de Shivaji Nagar où s'est déroulée cette incroyable rencontre, sera reproduit au Plateau, comme une sorte de prototype d'espace incluant une anamorphose, que j'aimerais par la suite, en attendant d'en trouver les moyens, réaliser en céramique et transporter sur mes lieux d'exposition à la manière du salon de musique de Kandinsky.

J'ai pu monter ce projet grâce à une première aide de la FNAGP et grâce au soutien de nombreuses personnes, entreprises et particuliers, qui ont tout de suite adhéré généreusement à cette aventure improbable. »

Georges Rousse

 

GEORGES ROUSSE 

Né en 1947 à Paris, Georges Rousse se passionne depuis son enfance pour la photographie. Avec la découverte du Land Art et du Carré noir sur fond blanc de Malevitch, Georges Rousse choisit à la fin des années 1960 de se consacrer entièrement à sa pratique artistique et d’intervenir dans le champ photographique en établissant une relation inédite de la peinture à l’espace. Il investit alors des lieux abandonnés qu’il affectionne depuis toujours pour les transformer en espace pictural et y construire une oeuvre éphémère, unique, que seule la photographie restitue. Pour permettre aux spectateurs de partager son expérience artistique, Georges Rousse présente dès le début des années 1980 des tirages de ses photographies en grand format.

Le Plateau. Espace d’exposition Région Rhône-Alpes
www.rhonealpes.fr

Richard Patterson: I’m Walking Here! - The FLAG Art Foundation, New York

Richard Patterson: I’m Walking Here!
The FLAG Art Foundation, New York
February 8 - May 17, 2014

I’m Walking Here! is a mini-survey and the first comprehensive presentation in New York of Richard Patterson’s career to date. It chronicles the British-born, Dallas-based artist’s many painterly innovations and pop-cultural inspirations and highlights new directions in his work. A veteran of Damien Hirst’s seminal 1988 exhibition Freeze and a leading light in the influential YBA, or Young British Artist, group, Patterson developed an exuberant and sumptuous style he dubs “hyperabstraction.” Made with outrageous skill and humor, his meticulously constructed images combine elements of photorealism and gestural abstraction in an attempt to update the brushy breakthroughs of modernist painting for an era when images travel at the speed of light. They are loaded with countless references -- art-historical, cinematic, historic, and Freudian. To enter the pictorial and psychic space of one of Patterson’s images is to tumble into a fantastical realm in which distinctions between form and symbol, surface and depth, and the sublime and the absurd are lovingly blurred. 

Its title is inspired by a painting "The Kennington Years" that references the 1969 film "Midnight Cowboy" as well as the artist’s own down-and-out early years in a pre-gentrified pocket of London. The exhibition maps Patterson’s intricately interlocking visual universe-one populated by beautiful women, British motorcycles, and outré industrial design objects. In addition to paintings and digital sketches, the installation includes a vintage Matchless Typhoon track bike, a Johansson triplex extending lamp designed in 1919, and, for the first time ever, a selection of the paint-daubed figurines and studio maquettes on which he bases many of his best-known compositions. 

The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the artist by Toby Kamps, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Menil Collection, Houston. 

Richard Patterson was born in the UK in 1963 and graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1986. He is represented by Timothy Taylor Gallery, UK. Richard Patterson was included in Damien Hirst’s Freeze, Surrey Docks, London (1988); as well as Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA (1997-00) among other notable exhibitions. He has had solo exhibitions at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London (1997); James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA (1999 and 2002); Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, USA (2000), Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2005, 2008 and 2013); and the Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas, USA (2009). Richard currently lives and works in Dallas, Texas, USA. 

Toby Kamps is the curator of modern and contemporary art at The Menil Collection. Previously, he was senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. He has organized solo exhibitions by artists such as Wols (Wolfgang Schulze), Claes Oldenburg, Ellsworth Kelly, Vanessa Beecroft, Martin Kersels, Adi Nes, Danny Lyon, Torsten Slama, and the collaborative team of John Wood and Paul Harrison. He also has produced numerous thematic survey projects including Silence, The Old, Weird America, Small World: Dioramas in Contemporary Art, and, with a curatorial team, Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art. A graduate of the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art and the Getty Museum Leadership Institute, Kamps has written on extensively on contemporary art and artists.

THE FLAG ART FOUNDATION
545 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.flagartfoundation.org

Roy Lichtenstein: Nudes and Interiors, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York

Roy Lichtenstein: Nudes and Interiors
The FLAG Art Foundation, New York
February 8 - May 17, 2014

The FLAG Art Foundation presents Roy Lichtenstein: Nudes and Interiors curated by artists Hilary Harkness and Ewan Gibbs organized in cooperation with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.  The exhibition includes 37 works by Lichtenstein including drawing, collage and sculpture as well two original works created by the curators in conjunction with the exhibition.

In Drawing from Inspiration and A Nude of One’s Own, the essays prepared for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Ewan Gibbs and Hilari Harkness reveal themselves to be artists meditating on the creative process with Lichtenstein in the foreground.  What does it mean to make art through time; what does it mean to pay homage; what does it mean to create an artistic space that can accommodate one’s cognitive and passionate impulses?  Their reflections are as artists who have been at work for over a decade and who share a vantage point that is both of their time and of artists throughout time.   

Ewan Gibbs and Hilari Harkness note a number of influences shared with Roy Lichtenstein, including paying homage to artists such as Matisse and Picasso - artists whose works (and lives) have sustained and nourished the curators’ creative processes.  The preparatory works featured in the show resonated with both curators for the clues the works leave behind with respect to Lichtenstein’s efforts, his fervor, and his passion. Clues sometimes overlooked in the fully realized collages and paintings that would follow.   

Hilari Harkness finds Roy Lichtenstein’s ability to assimilate high and low visual influences into a language that was his own inspiring. For this show, she has chosen to feature Lichtenstein’s late nudes, many of which were painted when he was in his seventies at a time when Harkness observes, he no longer had anything to prove and nothing to lose and which results in works laced with a palpable joie de vivre. 

Ewan Gibbs approaches Roy Lichtenstein’s interiors from a place of comfort and familiarity, having worked directly from photographs of hotel rooms taken from holiday brochures since 1993.  It was Lichtenstein, with his use of pictures from comics, phone books and advertisements, who provided Gibbs with a feeling of artistic freedom and confidence to use mass-produced advertising images as source material.   

As Hilari Harkness observes, painting grows out of the personal. There are times when we have to fight it, sometimes we submit to it, sometimes we let go of it.  But always – it is there and we have to figure out what we’re going to do about it. 

In this exhibition, Ewan Gibbs and Hilari Harkness invite us to take a glimpse into the world of Lichtenstein’s interiors and his nudes. A world packed with the indelible marks of a career that spanned decades and integrated a variety of artistic influences.   

Ewan Gibbs was born in 1973 and graduated from Goldsmiths College of Art in 1996. He is represented by Timothy Taylor Gallery, UK and Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, Texas.  Gibbs was commissioned by the SFMOMA as part of their 75th anniversary celebrations and has been featured in notable group exhibitions including Drawn from Photography, The Drawing Center, New York (2011); Making a Mark: Drawings from the Contemporary Collection, High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2011) among others. Recent solo exhibitions include Ewan Gibbs: America, Davidson College of Arts, North Carolina (2010); Ewan Gibbs, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2008). Ewan lives and works in Oxfordshire, UK. 

Hilary Harkness was born in Michigan in 1971 and is a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley and holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art. She exhibits with the Mary Boone Gallery, NY. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain, and the Deste Foundation in Athens, Greece and is in the collection of the Whitney Museum. In 2013, The FLAG Art Foundation hosted a retrospective of her cross-section paintings. Harkness has been featured in publications including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Interview magazine, Esquire and blogs for The Huffington Post. She has taught painting and sculpture as Artist in Residence at Yale Summer School of Art and Music, and lectured widely at institutions such as Columbia University, Yale University, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Hilary lives and works in Brooklyn. 

THE FLAG ART FOUNDATION
545 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.flagartfoundation.org

Art Paris Art Fair : ArtDesign 2014 - Art et design contemporain

ART PARIS ART FAIR 2014 : ARTDESIGN
Une plateforme vouée à l’exploration des liens entre art et design contemporain

Ouverte à toutes pratiques artistiques, ART PARIS ART FAIR offre avec la plateforme ArtDesign un secteur consacré au design de création contemporain. Selon le souhait des organisateurs, "introduire le design dans une foire d’art contemporain, c’est affirmer son statut d’objet d’art et de collection". Pour sa 3ème édition, la plateforme ArtDesign réunit au Grand Palais neuf participants, galeries et institutions, qui présentent des pièces exclusives réalisées en mode confidentiel par des talents contemporains. 

ACABAS (Paris)

Des créations d’Erwan Boulloud (mobilier, sculptures, luminaires), Pierre Demonchaux (mobilier et sculpture), Sylvie Guyomard (nouvelles pièces murales en ardoise), Elie Hirsch (sculpture).

ERWAN BOULLOUD 

Cycles - Sculpture en bétan et acier, 2013

Courtesy Acabas (Paris)

CAT-BERRO GALERIE (Paris)

Mattia Bonetti (dernière collection), Nicola L. (une pièce unique), Hélène Lathoumétie (jardins de porcelaine et verre), Jean-Michel Othoniel (perles lumineuses, tables en fonte d’aluminium et albâtre), Eric Schmitt. 

MATTIA BONETTI 

Palissade, 2013 

Courtesy Cat-Berro Galerie (Paris)

GALERIE DUTKO (Paris)

Béatrice Casadesus (paravents), Eric Schmitt (tables et luminaires), Hitomi Uchikura (oeuvres de papier).

ERIC SCHMITT 

Table Saturne, 2010 

Courtesy Galerie Dutko (Paris)

GALERIE JOUSSE ENTREPRISE (Paris)

Un solo show de Florence Doléac, avec des pièces exclusives pour ART PARIS ART FAIR 2014. 

FLORENCE DOLEAC 

Le salooon vert, 2014 

Courtesy Galerie Jousse Entreprise (Paris)

GALERIE L’ECLAIREUR (Paris)

Exposition personnelle de Vincenzo de Cotiis : des pièces exclusives du Progetto Domestico pour ART PARIS ART FAIR 2014 ; une armoire et une table basse en bois recyclé, antique et précieux, des luminaires en laiton argent oxydé traité main, une table en fibre de verre, des sièges en cuir naturel traité main. 

VICENZO DE COTIIS 

Progetto Domestico, 2014

Courtesy Galerie L’Eclaireur (Paris)

MINIMASTERPIECE (Paris)

Pour la première fois, la galerie présente un face à face "Artistes vs Designers". Côté artistes, les toutes nouvelles pièces de Françoise Pétrovitch et Vera Molnar, les bijoux de Miguel Chevalier et Sophia Vari. Côté designers, la galerie présente en exclusivité les nouveaux bijoux de Constance Guisset, des pièces très récentes de Cédric Ragot et François Azambourg, ainsi que des bijoux du designer allemand Axel Kufus. 

CEDRIC RAGOT 

Geometry, 2013 

Courtesy Galerie MiniMasterpiece (Paris)

GALERIE NEC NILSSON ET CHIGLIEN (Paris)

Un ensemble de sculptures céramiques et cinétiques de : Eva Hild (céramique et bronze), Steen Ipsen (céramique), Vincent Leroy (cinétique), Harumi Nakashima (céramique), Grégoire Scalabre (porcelaine).

GREGOIRE SCALABRE

Ondes, 2013 

Courtesy Galerie NeC Nilsson et Chigilien (Paris, France)

SÈVRES - CITE DE LA CERAMIQUE (Sèvres)

Un aperçu de la production contemporaine de porcelaine de Sèvres, à travers les toutes récentes créations du jeune designer hollandais Aldo Bakker (Grand dôme bleu céleste, AlinetoB, Dômes), les formes sensuelles de la céramiste Kristin McKirdy (Coupe, Nature morte,...) alliées aux volupteuses Coupes et Corolles du designer italien Andrea Branzi. Et un ensemble incontournable des pièces "icônes" de porcelaine de Sèvres, imaginées par Ettore Sottsass. 

ALDO BAKKER 

Vase de Sèvres, 2013

Courtesy Sèvres - Cité de la céramique

GALERIE ARMEL SOYER (Paris)

Mobiliers et tapisseries de Pierre Gonalons, Ruth Gurvich, Mathias Kiss, Julian Mayor, Ifeanyi Oganwu, Gilles Pernet. 

JULIAN MAYOR 

Fernando Copper Chair, 2012

Courtesy Galerie Armel Soyer (Paris)

NOUVEAUTE 2014 : ArtDesignLab

ROMAIN GUILLET et LOUISE DE SAINT ANGEL 

Untitled - Tapisserie 

ERIC VAN DE WALLE 

Inside Pedestal

Au sein d’un espace d’exposition intitulé ArtDesignLab, ART PARIS ART FAIR 2014 donne carte blanche à 8 designers dont le travail et les pratiques hybrides explorent les limites entre art et design : 

• Gilles Belley
• David Enon
• Barnabé Fillion – The Peddler
• Dominique Mathieu
• Statue – Romain Guillet / Louise de Saint Angel
• Joseph Meidan
• Eric Van de Walle
• Perrine Vigneron.

Des pièces uniques, singulières, des prototypes ou productions exclusives seront dévoilés pour la première fois au sein d’une scénographie conçue pour ART PARIS ART FAIR 2014. Résolument prospectifs et engagés, les designers invités viendront à la rencontre du public pendant la durée de l’exposition et réaliseront des interventions Ad Hoc. 

BARNABE FILLION

The Peddler

DAVID ENON

Le multimeuble

LE PRIX ArtDesign
Il récompense la meilleure collaboration entre une galerie et un créateur. Il sera remis mercredi 26 mars, 15h, au Grand Palais.

Précédent post sur Wanafoto présentant Art Paris Art Fair 2014 

Designs of the year 2014, London Design Museum

Designs of the Year 2014 
Design Museum, London 
Nomination announced - Exhibition from 26 March to 25 August 2014 

Kate Moss’s favourite app, a floating school in a Nigerian lagoon, friendly lamp posts, virtual mountain rescue teams, a recoiling mudguard for the discerning cyclist - just some of the 76 nominations for Designs of the Year 2014, announced yesterday.

Designs of the Year gathers together a year of cutting-edge innovation and original talent; showcasing the very best in global Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphic, Product and Transport design.

2014’s nominees include international design stars such as Zaha Hadid, John Pawson, Stephen Jones, David Chipperfield and Miuccia Prada, alongside crowd-funded start ups and student projects. All of the nominated designs go on display at the Design Museum, in an exhibition open from 26 March to 25 August 2014. A distinguished panel of experts chose a winner from each category and one overall winner, to be announced later in the year.

Designs of the Year pits the ingeniously amusing against the admirably innovative. The Dumb Ways To Die app features cute characters who meet increasingly grisly ends, accompanied by an insanely catchy tune; while the PEEK Portable Eye Examination Kit harnesses smartphone technology to revolutionise eye care in developing countries.

The broad reach of the competition allows for an overview of emerging trends and common themes from across different design disciplines. This year the ubiquity of the smartphone is particularly apparent, as is the disruptive effect of crowd-funding sites such as Kickstarter. More than ever, designers are seeking to blur boundaries between the digital and physical worlds with new ideas like the calendar made of Lego that syncs with your computer/phone diary and the fire alarm that texts to let you know that everything’s ok.

After the success of its first outing in 2013, the Visitor Vote will return, allowing visitors to the Design Museum to pick their favourite design from the exhibition. New for 2014 is the Social Vote which sees two nominations fight it out each day through the exhibition’s online Social Vote platform. Broadcast to over one million of the Design Museum’s Twitter and Facebook followers, the Social Vote allows people from all over the world to participate in Designs of the Year 2014.

The gaming app that outlives its player, the mobile phone you can build yourself, the bottle caps that turn into building blocks – someday the other museums will be showing this stuff. #designsoftheyear

DESIGN MUSEUM 
Shad Thames, LONDON, SE1 2YD
www.designmuseum.org

Brancusi, Rosso, Man Ray - Framing Sculpture, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Brancusi, Rosso, Man Ray - Framing Sculpture
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Through May 11, 2014

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen brings together works from all over the world by three artists who were decisive for the development of modern art: Constantin Brancusi, Medardo Rosso and Man Ray. This is the first exhibition to combine works by these famous sculptors together with their photographs, affording a unique insight into the artists’ working methods.

Masterpieces that have rarely or never been seen in the Netherlands will be lent by important museums such as the Centre Pompidou, MoMA and Tate Modern. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will show 40 sculptures and more than 60 photographs by Constantin Brancusi (Hobiţa 1876 - Paris 1957), Medardo Rosso (Turin 1858 - Milan 1928) and Man Ray (Philadelphia 1890 - Paris 1976). The exhibition features sculptures such as Brancusi’s ‘Bird in Space’ (1941) and Rosso’s ‘Ecce Puer’ (1906) alongside works by Man Ray from the museum’s collection, including the sculpture ‘The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse’ (1920/1971). Presenting the sculptures together with the artists’ photographs reveals their often-surprising perspectives on their own works.

Framing sculpture

All three artists lived in Paris at the beginning of the 20t th century and all three documented their own sculptures extensively through photography. The photographs show how they interpreted their sculptures and how they wanted them to be seen by others. Constantin Brancusi is considered the father of modern sculpture with his highly simplified sculptures of people and animals. In his photographs he experimented with light and reflection so that his sculptures absorb their environment and appear to come to life. Medardo Rosso is the artist who introduced impressionism in sculpture. The indistinct contours of his apparently quickly modelled figures in plaster and wax make them appear to fuse with their surroundings. Rosso cut up the soft-focus photographs of his work, made them into collages and reworked them with ink so that the sculptures appear even flatter and more contourless. Man Ray is best known as a photographer but was also a painter and sculptor. His choice of materials was unconventional: he combined existing objects to create new works, comparable to the ‘readymades’ of his friend Marcel Duchamp. Man Ray’s experimental use of photography led him to make photographs without the use of a camera. He made these so-called ‘rayographs’ by placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing them briefly to light, leaving behind a ghostly impression.

Through the eyes of the artist 

The photographs of Brancusi, Rosso and Man Ray give the public the opportunity to see the sculptures through the artists’ own eyes. Three multimedia presentations, including projections and animations, will use modern digital techniques to replicate the artists’ explorations of form.

Museum Boijmans
Museumpark 18, 3015 CX, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
www.boijmans.nl

A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio, MoMA, New York

A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
February 8 – October 5, 2014 

A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio examines the ways in which photographers and other artists using photography have worked and experimented within their studios, from photography’s inception to the present. Featuring both new acquisitions and works from the Museum’s collection that have not been on view in recent years, A World of Its Own brings together photographs, films, and videos by artists such as Berenice Abbott, Uta Barth, Zeke Berman, Karl Blossfeldt, Constantin Brancusi, Geta Brătescu, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, Jan Groover, Barbara Kasten, Man Ray, Bruce Nauman, Paul Outerbridge, Irving Penn, Adrian Piper, Edward Steichen, William Wegman, and Edward Weston.

Depending on the period, the cultural or political context, and the commercial, artistic, or scientific motivations of the artist, the studio might be a haven, a stage, a laboratory, or a playground. For more than a century, photographers have dealt with the spaces of their studios in strikingly diverse and inventive ways: from using composed theatrical tableaux (in photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron or Cindy Sherman) to putting their subjects against neutral backdrops (Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe); from the construction of architectural sets within the studio (Francis Bruguière, Thomas Demand) to chemical procedures conducted within the darkroom (Walead Beshty, Christian Marclay); and from precise recordings of motion (Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton) to playful, amateurish experimentation (Roman Signer, Peter Fischli and David Weiss). A World of Its Own offers another history of photography—a photography created within the walls of the studio, and yet as innovative as its more extroverted counterpart, street photography.

The exhibition is organized by Quentin Bajac, The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator, with Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography. 

MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art
The Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, third floor
www.moma.org

Kati Immonen Exhibition, Helsinki Contemporary - Beside the Point

Kati Immonen: Beside the Point 

Helsinki Contemporary, Helsinki

February 7 - March 3, 2014

Beside the Point is about dealing with things, formulating them and re-shaping them in a way that is deliberately something other than the thing itself. It is simultaneously more and less, too little and, at the same time, much more than enough – of the point. The nitty-gritty, and well-meaning, but persistent questioning of it.

Beside the Point is an exhibition, its title. In Kati Immonen’s case Beside the Point is a gallery exhibition in which, using the means of painting and assimilating its possibilities, and creating within them, there is a focus on everyday phenomena, everyday moments, which go by, but sting us, bite us, as they pass.

Kati Immonen’s medium for painting is the aquarelle, i.e. the transparent watercolour. A choice, and the consequences of going deeper into and developing that choice are now present, on offer. The benefits and the quality of the paintings in Kati Immonen’s second exhibition at the gallery are outstandingly evident. It is superb, the way that Immonen is able to use and handle her chosen medium – colours, forms, in levels of narrative that are mutually articulated, in a movement from the figurative to the abstract, and back.

“Watercolour forces you to make some sort of plan or decision about the painting in advance – you don’t get the white paper back once you have gone and put your paws on it. This has been a relief to me, a kind of decisiveness and limitation of the possibilities, the fact that you can’t go on endlessly changing and wavering and putting off decisions about the direction of the painting.

“A sort of common denominator for my paintings could be using the properties of watercolour, its lightness, translucency, and the cultural baggage related to innocuousness, as part of the working process. In that sense, my working process has not really changed a great deal over the years, even if my subjects and focus of interest have varied. I suppose my working process has taken a roundabout route: sometimes, I feel like just painting and enjoying the colours with no more significant content than that, sometimes, I get inspired by working via some theme or other.”

Beside the Point is commonplace. It raises and lowers, makes special, those commonplace events, those countless moments whose value we rarely have time to acknowledge. Kati Immonen grabs hold of and takes pleasure in the successes and excesses of the everyday. What emerge are comments and utterances that demonstrate that the everyday is not just sublime, but also trivial, very trivial. Kati Immonen deals with something we all have, our quite incomprehensible ability to quibble and grumble, moan and complain – over nothing.

The lightness of the works, the nearness and simultaneous depth of their colour world take us into everyday scenes, in which they are exposed to the light somewhere between both a shared sense of shame and insightful detachment. There, between and by way of experiences that combine images of nature; for example, fish that are both human and alien, and works that come close, get under the skin, without our noticing it.

There follows an awakening, a moment of clarity. We are not laughing at anyone, we are laughing at ourselves, and we are laughing together.

Quotations from a conversation between Mika Hannula and Kati Immonen

The exhibition coincides with the publication of Kati Immonen’s book Talvisatu (Winter Tale).

HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY

Bulevardi 10, 00120 Helsinki

helsinkicontemporary.com

Jean-Michel Basquiat at Christie's, New York. Works from the collection of Alexis Adler

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT 
WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF ALEXIS ADLER 
Christies's, Exhibition at Rockefeller Center, New York
1-28 March 2014 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

© Alexis Adler

Before Jean-Michel became Basquiat, and could afford studios and canvases, he painted all over his apartments — on walls, doors, refrigerators, clothes and any other bare surface he could find. In 1979, the artist began transforming the East Village apartment he was sharing with Alexis Adler, just such a living installation. Christie’s is honored today to announce a blockbuster month-long curated exhibition featuring a grouping of approximately 50 works coming from the Lower East Side apartment, where she lived with Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1979 to 1980. The three major works, a glyph-like work on plaster that reads Olive Oyl, a door titled within as Famous Negro Athletes and Milk painted on a radiator will highlight the First-Open sale of Post-War and Contemporary on March 6th, and a selection of 41 works and items will be sold through a dedicated Online-Only sale to be held March 3-17. To be comprehensive, the exhibition will also present works and archive photographs on loan from Alexis Adler’s collection.

The exceptional month long exhibition will take place on the 20th floor of 1230 Avenue of the Americas, at Rockefeller Center in March 2014. The show will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue, featuring never before published images of the artist and several unique photographs of Basquiat taken by Alexis Adler.

“Jean was just a young and wonderful person that had a lot to say. Everything around us was about art at that time, everything was about creativity, and whatever he could find became art. He was only 19 and just absorbing and creating. It’s been really wonderful living with these pieces for almost 35 years, and I hope that the next owners get as much joy as I did. Living with it is a responsibility. There are beautiful pieces, and they mean a lot to me because I was there, have remembrances.  But I know that Jean gave them to me as a gift, and I enjoyed them as such, I have just the memories. I’ve always been interested in sharing and I have realize that today young people are willing to learn more about Jean and are really interested in his art.  I'm really excited to be able to have the show at Christie’s, as well as pass on, and share the artwork with other people so they can enjoy it. I’ve been enjoying it for a long time,” declared Alexis Adler.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Alexis Adler cohabited from 1979 to 1980, when Basquiat was nineteen, and creating punk-influenced photocopied collages and painted clothing for sale on the street. Alexis Adler’s collection includes never before exhibited items including paintings, drawings and postcards as well as painted clothing kept private since the 80’s when the artist and Alexis shared the Lower East Side apartment.

“It's a pleasure to be able to present to the public this wonderful grouping of material from the collection of Alexis Adler. The sum total of these works provide an intimate view of Basquiat before his fame and while he was practicing graffiti in the streets and getting by on his own wits and the good will of others who recognized his tremendous creative spark. His name was SAMO and it was written everywhere, he was infamous before becoming famous. This body of work exhibits the artist’s early grasp of his ability and potential, many of the words and forms represented here carry over into his canvases which will be created just a few months later. We are indebted to Alexis Adler for having the foresight to preserve these early pieces and present them to the public now for the very first time,” stated Jonathan Laib, Christie’s, Senior Specialist, Post-War & Contemporary Art.

Adler has just graduated from college when they met. She became part of the downtown scene along with Basquiat, Michael Holman, Al Diaz and Shannon Dawson – young friends with an alternative style who became regulars at the Mudd Club and other downtown fixtures.  When they first started going together neither Basquiat or Adler had a home, and they sometimes stayed together with some friends. In 1979, they both moved in an apartment on East 12th Street near Avenue B. It was his first permanent address after leaving his father's home in Brooklyn. He had a room in the back of the railroad apartment filled with papers where he made his drawings and poetic phrases. Adler had studied art history at Barnard, and majored in Biology in college; she is today a successful embryologist in New York. Jean-Michel Basquiat was fascinated by her Biology textbooks, and copied many of the Biology and Chemistry symbols into his drawing.

The collection also includes writings and early drawings, as well as his postcards and painted clothes. In these early years, Basquiat painted on walls and objects in other apartments he stayed at, or left drawings on paper as gifts. But many of those were thrown away and painted over, and other objects sold when prices for his work first started rising.

BASQUIAT'S WORKS TO BE OFFERD IN THE FIRST OPEN OF POST WAR AND CONTEMPORARY ART, 6 March 2014

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988) 

Olive Oyl 

paint on wall, 48 x 30 in. 

Estimate: $400,000-600,000 

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled (Famous Negro Athletes)

paint on door (Detail), 80 x 24 in.

Executed in 1980-1981

Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Milk

paint on radiator, 24 x 16 x 6 in.

Estimate: $300,000-500,000 

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

“I met Jean (which is what everybody called him, I think, until he got famous—I never called him that while he was alive), toward the beginning of 1979 when he was 18.  (I was at the self-dramatic Jesus’s crucifixion age.)  But we treasured the same information and we spoke the same language and that put us on the level.  I never thought of him as a kid, but as a wise guy/wise man.  He was a rebel.  What are you rebelling against?  What have you got?  Hey, I found him by tracking down the words he wrote on walls on the street, and that was the beginning of a permanent friendship.  I was always glad to see him show up.  He was always up for perpetrating some fun.  He would tell you something interesting, ask you a question you couldn’t answer, give you a gift you didn’t expect, play your records, look through your books and in the refrigerator, and leave you a drawing. Thanks!

Alexis’s collection is the pure pro-bono production of an artist on fire with ideas.  These are the roots and the seeds of thing to come. Already in 1979 he was developing his own vocabulary of words, characters (Popeye and Olive Oyl) and signs.  Here’s the crown and the wheel, the dotted line, the spilled ink.  He’s trying things out.  With the postcards he’s doing Warhol and Rauschenberg, pop art, and with the clothes he’s doing Franz Kline and Pollock.” Glenn O’Brien, writer and friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Extract from the text written for the Christie’s dedicated exhibition catalogue. 

BASQIAT'S WORKS TO BE OFFERD ON THE ONLINE-ONLY SALE, 3 - 17 March 2014

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled (Typical Cancer)

ink and collage on paper, 11 x 8 1/4 in.

Executed in 1979-1980

Estimate: $20,000-30,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled

collage and mixed media on paper

7 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.

Executed in 1979-1980

Estimate: $8,000-12,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled (Rock Hudson)

collage and ink on paper

6 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.

Executed in 1979-1980

Estimate: $20,000-30,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled (Flag)

watercolor and typewriter type on paper

2 3/8 x 5 in.; 11 7/8 x 12 1/4 in. (framed)

Executed in 1979-1980

$50,000-70,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Mead Sketch Diary

spiral notebook with red ink inscriptions

11 x 8 1/2 in.

Executed in 1979-1980

$80,000-120,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)
Blue paint on sweatshirt
Executed in 1979-1980
Estimate: $10,000-15,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

Exhibition
Rockefeller Center, 20th Floor on 1230 Avenue of the Americas, March 1 - 28, 2014
Monday to Saturday 10am – 5pm
Sunday March 2, 1pm – 5pm
Closed on Sunday March 9, 16 and 23

First open sale: March 6, 2014
Christie’s 20 Rockefeller Plaza

Online-only sale, March 3 – 17, 2014
Christies.com/pwconline

Christie’s Website: www.christies.com

Larry Johnson & Marnie Weber, Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica

Larry Johnson & Marnie Weber

Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica

February 8 - March 15, 2014

Patrick Painter, Inc. presents an exhibition of work by Los Angeles-based artists Larry Johnson and Marnie Weber. The exhibition features pieces that explore different approaches to photo-based imagery.

LARRY JOHNSON’s stylized text-based works often play off of humor, celebrity fascination and class politics. Larry Johnson creates images by re-contextualizing found materials using his signature graphic style. His narratives and dialogues often originate from newspapers, recordings and magazines and employ dark themes including sexuality, disillusionment, death, and the American Dream.

The voice behind Untitled (Ghost Stories) (1992) addresses memories of the fictional variety. During the 1970’s and 1980’s in America, the media ushered in 1950’s nostalgia. ‘Doris Day,’ ‘patent leather shoes,’ and ‘virgin pins,’ refer to the decade immediately preceding Johnson’s own historical memory. Because the text directly addresses the viewer, there is a presupposition of collective memories. Here Larry  Johnson pokes fun at the media-engendered capacity to fondly remember a past that no one ever really knew. "Hungarican" is a combination of ‘Hungarian’ and ‘Puerto Rican’ and alludes to 1970’s comedian Freddie Prinze, who shot himself in the head.

This body of photo-collages by MARNIE WEBER follow a narrative based on her on-going series, titled, “The Spirit Girls.” The story chronicles an all-female band whose members die tragically, but due to unfulfilled dreams, return as spirits to communicate their message of emancipation. With accompanying music and performance, the group is inspired in part by the American Spiritualist movement of the 1850’s. With their costumes, masks, and wigs, the Spirit Girls create a musical performance that is consciously visual.

In A Warm Deer (2007) a Spirit Girl is pictured lying down in front of a large stag. A snow-covered forest envelops them in the background. Marnie Weber’s use of strange, exaggerated color and motifs span a range of art historical and pop cultural references which render the time ambiguous. The sinister look in the Spirit Girl’s eyes defies the child-like innocence of her pose. The mask leaves her emotions up for interpretation. The scene is reminiscent of tableau vivant, and creates a palpable sense that this is a snapshot in her performance-journey. The absurdity and whimsy nonetheless carry dark undertones.

LARRY JOHNSON received his M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts and has been shown in many prestigious institutions throughout the world. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Marc Jancou Contemporary in New York (2010), the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2009), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2009). He lives and works in Los Angeles.

MARNIE WEBER received her B.A. from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Based out of Los Angeles, Weber’s work has been exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group shows. She recently had a solo show at Cardi Black Box in Milan (2013) and her work has been exhibited at the Museum Of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2013), and the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2012).

PATRICK PAINTER INC.

2525 Michigan Avenue, Unit B2, Santa Monica, 90404

www.patrickpainter.com

Nari Ward exhibition at LSU Museum of Art

Nari Ward, Rooted Communities 
Louisiana State University Museum of Art 
February 7 - August 10, 2014

NARI WARD  

Act of God (detail), 2013 

Basketball cards and stencil ink on wooden panel, 48 x 36 x 1.5 in (121.9 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm). 

Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong 

Rooted Communities coincides with Nari Ward's residency as LSU College of Art + Design's prestigious Nadine Carter Russell Chair and features a group of the artist’s sculptures, works on paper, and mixed-media installations. Ward's powerful yet delicate works articulate multi-layered issues that affect all communities—economics, poverty, race, culture, and how these factors shape a society. Using discarded objects he collects from his local environment, Ward's work gives a presence and new life to these unwanted or forgotten items, the underlying meaning changing within the context of its presentation.

The exhibition includes twenty-five of Nari Ward's works spanning the past decade as well as a new work, Free Weight Bottle Incubator (2013), created during Ward’s residency at LSU. Utilizing bottles recovered from the foundation and ruins of the Alvin Roy Strength and Health Studios, Louisiana's first commercial gym that opened in the 1940s, Ward added plexiglas disks and numerical engravings on the ends, transforming them into free weight sculptures. These works are displayed in an interactive model of the original Alvin Roy building, which the viewer can reach inside of to lift the weights. As part of this project, Ward also photographed members from the Baton Rouge community posing with the sculptural bottle weights. Ward comments: "The idea is to take the unearthed bottles as reference to forgotten history being examined, held and experienced on a visual and physical plane. These delicate excavated remnants of the foundation become poignant vessels of reflection on how history can play a role in the strengthening and maintaining of the spirit."

Nari Ward's use of discarded materials to confront challenging themes is further illustrated throughout the exhibition in works such as Swing (2012), a tire studded with running shoes and suspended from a hangman’s noose, a particularly poignant and raw symbol in the Deep South. In Loisaidas LiquorsouL (2011), Nari Ward rearranges the letters of a neon liquor store sign, a frequent sight in urban neighborhoods, positioning the letters S-O-U-L upright while leaving the remaining letters upside down. Nari Ward uses collectible basketball cards in works including Act of God (2013) to draw connections between sports, entertainment and African American culture. The players have been blacked out leaving only the orange basketballs exposed, creating the illusion of a starry sky. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Nari Ward: Short Biography

Nari Ward's (b. 1963, St. Andrews, Jamaica) work has been widely exhibited on an international level, including solo exhibitions at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2011); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2011); Institute of Visual Arts, Milwaukee (1997); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2002); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2001, 2000). The artist has taken part in important group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennale (2006); Prospect 1 New Orleans (2008); and Documenta XI, Kassel (2003). 

In 2012, Nari Ward was the recipient of the Rome Prize, a yearly award bestowed by the American Academy in Rome to a select group of individuals who represent the highest standard of excellence in the arts and humanities. Additionally, he has received prestigious commissions from the United Nations and the World Health Organization, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Pollock Krasner Foundation.

Nari Ward’s work is collected by numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, North Carolina; Studio Museum, Harlem; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum, New York. 

Nari Ward is represented by Lehmann Maupin, New York.

Louisiana State University Museum of Art, 100 Lafayette St, Baton Rouge, LA 70801