ART-PRESENTATION:Minutes To Go

This is the first solo exhibition, in Paris, of the American duo Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe. Each of their in situ installations offers an opportunity to enjoy an intense experience in their psychedelic universe, influenced by the American counterculture and utopias of the ‘60s–‘70s and the fanzine “Artichoke Underground”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gallery Mitterrand Archive

For their exhibition, ‘’Minutes to Go’’, the artists present an ensemble of pieces taken from their recent installations, referring to their former projects and the narrative that they have been developing together since 2007. For instance, the rice sculptures like Bowery Cat (Black I) were a result of their participation in Art Basel Unlimited in 2013 for which they had recreated for example, the interior of the Punjabi Kitchen, a cheap New York fast food restaurant. The sculptures-pedestals, are a reference to Superstudio’s Monumento Continuo, a negative utopia created by a group of Florentine architects in the ‘60s-‘70s as a response the standardization of architectural forms. Finally, numerous archival documents (magazine covers, photographs, e.c.t.) taken from the fanzine Artichoke Underground complete this exhibition, reminding Hello Meth Lab in the Sun (2008) the first shared work that Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe (along with Alexandre Singh) produced at Ballroom Marfa (Texas). In this installation, the visitor moves from a dark and cluttered clandestine meth laboratory to a burnt-out kitchen, and then, brutally to an exhibition space with its immaculate walls. These unexpected changes from one space to another appertain as much to the effects of a dream or a hallucination, as they do to the technique of smash cut, as if one were passing, in an instant, from one cinematographic sequence to another. The realism of these recreated spaces, the quality and attention to detail of the decor and the accessories, resemble an abandoned film set. Freeman and Lowe’s installations therefore plunge the spectator into a fiction where time and space are completely distorted.

Info: “Minutes To Go’’, Galerie Mitterrand, 79 rue du Temple, Paris, Duration: 6/2-21/2/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 11:00-19:00, http://galeriemitterrand.com