ART CITIES:Paris-Batia Suter

The exhibition that are on presentation at LE BAL are characterized with the vitality and truth of our era. As an artist Batia Suter writes in images. She collects and hoards them relentlessly and has done so for the last 30 years. All types of images capture her imagination, in particular printed images. She favors random methods of research and her sources are as many and various as the types of publications she dips into all kinds of photo albums, atlases, scientific journals, catalogues, art books, history books, animal magazines and many more besides.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: LE BAL Archive

Especially in “Radial Grammar” Batia Suter’s first solo exhibition in France that is unfolding trough every corner of LE BAL, the artist presents an in-situ installation. At the basement the artist create an installation from B&W photos, captured around Place de Chlinchy, where the independent platform is located, creating its anthropogeography. A cake, details of female legs in high heels, female lips, a raised skirt swirling around a female body, a male bust with a glass of alcohol in hand, or a tie, all super enlarged in the foreground and deliberately printed with large pixels, contribute to the blurred sensual atmosphere of a world that lies in between. Suter does not use frames, glass or any other material in her work, but leaves her B&W photos with a white background around, through the immediacy of the paper to capture and carry, as a bridge without intermediaries, a world which is pulsing out there and representing in her viewer. In contrast the video projection that occupies an entire wall contains B&W images that don’t seem to have coherence with each but a single dominant element the sense. “Radial Grammar” is an exhibition that dominates feeling prevails without obvious sentiment.  Going up to the ground floor; female lips sucking spaghetti from a full dish with voluptuousness introduce the visitor in a large installation in the center of the space where clean and unused disposable plastic boxes of food, in every size, and color where the rectangle shape dominate, create a series of different assumptions and thoughts about food or its lack. “Radial Grammar” is an exhibition which initially looks chaotic, like some of LE BAL’s exhibitions, but then the viewer finds that is clear and easy but not easily digested, he can browse with ease and is free to decide if he likes this world likes or not. However, surely within these pleasant-unpleasant or sensual images everyone will find a piece of his/herself. Once again, Le Bal has reimbursed us!–Efi Michalarou

Info: LE BAL, 6 Impasse de la Défense, Paris, Duration: 25/5-26/8/18, Days & Hours: Wed 12:00-22:00, Thu-Sun 12:00-19:00, http://www.le-bal.fr/en