ART-REVIEW:Ali Kazma-Souterrain

It’s not the first time I left disappointed from Jeu de Paume. In the past, however, I was founding the excuse that the contemporary photo exhibition that usually in on presentation on the upper floor of the building was inferior to the exhibition of the lower one. Usually at the two different floors of Jeu de Paume are on presentation simultaneously, an exhibition of contemporary photography, an exhibition of classical photography and a video projection in the basement. But this time Ali Kazma’s exhibition “Souterrain” compared with the exhibition “Things” with works by Albert Renger-Patzsch was equal. There were truly two outstanding exhibitions, one of which was classic B&W photography with excellent prints (!!!) and the other an amazing video exhibition. But here the problemς begin. The walls are occupied mainly by large screens and complementary with smaller ones, projecting videos that all are different, without any sequence and coherence between them, and each one has very strong and thrilling images. As a result, the disorientation of the viewer’s attention, to the point that at the exit, when I asked my friends what video they followed on the screen and liked, the answer was “We did not watched any videos but fragmentary images”. This is the first negative point of the exhibition, which is not addressed only to specialists that we have the method to attend such exhibitions, secondly and most important is the time. On 12-15 screens, are in projection different videos, each one has o duration of 15 minutes or more, meaning that the average time you need to watch the whole exhibition is 2.5-3 hours, time that I do not think the average viewer can afford.The worst of all is that the Jeu de Paume’s coffeehouse -in any case the cafes of the entire Museums act as a breakaway and a space for someone to sort out information and continue touring the exhibitions- is a Japanese restaurant that looks like if it is used as a lunch break for the employees from the surrounding offices! I think that the way of presenting the exhibitions should be changed so to make them easier for the average viewer and definitely to think that not everyone likes the Japanese cuisine and Tea or even if we like it, after such exhibitions, we need other kinds of gastronomic suggestions. However, it is not accidental that, as many times as I have visited Jeu de Paume, it has the less visitors  the other Museums, although it is located in the Jardin des Tuileries, a stone’s throw from the Place de la Concorde.-Efi Michalarou