ART-TRIBUTE: Metamorphosis. Art in Europe Now,Part I
The exhibition “Metamorphosis. Art in Europe Now” gives the prominence to the diversity of young artists ‘voices celebrating the unity in Europe and mapping out the creative landscape of this continent. The underlined ideas are aptly summed up in the show’s title of Metamorphosis, which relates to notions of collecting, reassembling, transforming and fragmenting (Part II).
By Vassiliki Liakopoulou
Photo: Fondation Cartier Archive
After one-year research, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presents a deliberately restricted selection of 21 artists from 16 countries across Europe. These creators, chosen among nearly 1000 artists and born between 1980 and 1994, they came of age after the fall of the Berlin Wall and most of them have studied or live in a country other than where they were born. This element depicts the continuous mobility that exists within the European cultural space. For many of them, this exhibition, which brings together painting, sculpture, fashion, design or film, is their first presence in an international institution. Their frequently fragmented aesthetics reveal an interest in hybridization, collage and archaeology. The title of the exhibition was inspired by the various metamorphoses underlying the work of these artists, at the center of which there are major contemporary preoccupations such as the preservation and recycling of materials, new takes on historical and cultural heritage and the re-examination of identity constructions. The resulting works, lyrical, refined, or savage reveal a strong desire to hybridize identities, cultures and forms of expression. Inspired by the past, their works concentrate on issues of the present. With poetry, fantasy, and humor, this new generation of artists is helping to the creation of the face of today’s and tomorrow’s Europe. On the ground floor, the artists demonstrate an interest in questions of architecture and shared space, both public and private. Their works have been conceived in close relation with the architecture of the building housing them, in order to be caused an interaction and a dialogue both with the interior and the exterior environment of the institution. Entered in the exhibition space of ground floor the work of Kostas Lambridis attracts firstly the visitor’s attention due to its size and position. “The Elemental Cabinet”, his graduation project, is considered a reinterpretation of the “Badminton Cabinet” and at the same time a homage to Robert Rauschenberg’s “Elemental Paintings”. With this creation but also with the two other works made for the exhibition, the artist juxtaposes opposing concepts of the value of materials and examines the concept of re-appropriation. This attempt to be combined a variety of items without any sense of hierarchy is also obvious in “Tenant of Culture”. This concept of Hendrickje Schimmel explores how the public is affected by consumer trends, fashion magazines and social media as for the way we dress. But this concern for over-production, waste and new life preoccupies Formafantasma duo too. Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, focused on electronic waste as an essential resource for the near future, they used recycling and they conducted a detailed investigation, whose the result is a line of office furniture. This creation is attended by three videos that provide a synopsis of Formafantasma’s research. Simultaneously this use of industrial materials appears to Piotr Lakomy’s work. Influenced by Le Corbusier and Frederick Kiesler, the artist explores the relationship of sculpture, human body, architecture and the environment. For that reason he created a sculpture that seems to be expanded from the inside of Fondation Cartier out into the garden. This study of sculpture and architecture is also evident to Marion Verboom’s creation that explores the evolution of form and often relates human objects to natural ones. Her “Achronies” are columns made by the combination of elements from different styles and regions and with this way she creates a specific vocabulary of forms, through which she imagines a different, new version of the world’s history. These undefined forms of Marion Verboom lead conceptually to Kris Lemsalu and the beings that she represents-animals, humans, hybrids-. In this exhibition she combines without any hierarchy different found objects such as blue balloons, a Soviet-era fishing boat, rope, examining the existential questions of life and she constructs a sculptural installation that grows from the inside of the building out into the garden. With the same way, Nika Kutateladze has taken an abandoned house from his family’s native village and he has placed it in a new context, showing the consequences of the rural exodus happened in his country in the early 90’s. This act of preservation characterizes also the “Mother’s Tongue” of Lap-See Lam, who explores the ambiguity of identity and cultural constructs by a film recording of the interior of several Chinese restaurants in Stockholm as an exploration of the history of Chinese diaspora in Sweden. On the other side of the same floor the installation of Charlie Biligham includes paintings in various formats and decorative objects, such as vases, creating the sense of domestic environment. These paintings are a kind of the 18th-century satirical drawings and they seem like the Hogarth’s caricatures but in new compositions and different political and social context. For the same exhibition, Alexandros Vasmoulakis has composed a large-scale collage of a variety of techniques with vibrant colors. With this creation, the artist aims to the phenomenon of pareidolia. He, as well as Kasper Bosmans with “Legend Paintings”, encourages the viewer to find recognizable forms and decipher the composition. In the background of this exhibition space, Benjamin Graindorge presents the “mirrorMirage” combining cutting-edge digital technologies with traditional crafts. The final room, the exhibition’s climax, features artists proposing a dialogue, either spiritual or more secular, with the nonhuman world, and more specifically, with animal figures or hybrid figures such as George Rouy who combines traditional painting with computer software, enlisting Photoshop to help map out his compositions. Another aspect of hybridisation come in terms of imagination in Miryam Haddad’s creation with paintings that seem to come from fairytales and legends and reveal a dark reality, despite of vivid colors. This pessimist side of life is obvious to the film “Martin pleure”, which narrates the story of a lonely young man, whose friends have suddenly disappeared and he tries to find them and gradually drifts into madness. Simultaneously, in the small hall of institution’s lower floor, there are sculptures of Evgeny Antufiev ,made from a variety of materials, that explore recurring primordial forms and they have been created accordingly a floor plan reminiscent of mausoleum. These sculptures are in dialogue with several animal-hide paintings and a sculpture of Raphael Vogel. This artist brings together sound, video, sculpture and found objects and she aims to examine the opposing dynamics of force and fragility ,dependency and independency. This diversity of materials and ideas characterizes not only the specific work of Vogel but generally the whole exhibition and it functions as a reminder of pluralization and vitality of European cultural space that we sometimes forget.
Info: Curator: Thomas Delamarre assisted by Sidney Gérard, Associate Curator: Leanne Sacramone assisted by Sonia Digianantonio, Curatorial Assistant: Beatriz Forti, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 261 Boulevard Raspail, 75014 Paris, Duration: 4/4-16/6/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11- 20:00, www.fondationcartier.com
