ART CITIES:Paris-Openings 25-28/1/18

The exhibition “Tapisseries et estampes” highlights the woven work of Etel Adnan. Large colored tapestries, with sensitive lines, objects of a joint work between the artist and the Pinton workshop, adorn the walls of the gallery Galerie Lelong & Co.-Paris. Made of wool on a low-smooth loom, between 2015 and 2017 from projects drawn by the artist in the years 60-70, but also from new boxes created during the year, these works are the result of collaboration which makes it still more endearing “as the artist writes in his book “Life is a weaving” published in 2016. In parallel, the bookshop exhibits a group of recent prints edited by Lelong Editions. Most of them are engravings with more or less abstract landscapes whose titles encourage travel: To the Ocean, The desert fire, California, Sea view, Guatemala … Simple shapes and bright colors which compose them are in direct relation with the painted work of the artist. Info: Galerie Lelong & Co.-Paris, 13 rue de Téhéran, Paris, Duration: 25/1-10/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:30-18:00, Sat 14:00-18:30, www.galerie-lelong.com

Lucie Picandet is presenting her solo exhibition “Au jour d’Hui”, the new episode of her fictional project “Celui que je suis” which gives the exhibition its title. Back in 2004, Lucie Picandet found a photographic postcard in a flea market in Paris that will set it all in motion (research, writing, creation) and therefore influence her works (embroideries, notebooks, sculptures, etc.). Going back in time, she continues here her introspective and sensitive journey. Every work is a step. Her unconscious and universe are invented and unfolded before our eyes, transposed into shapes and words in an unbridled manner. We watch her become the train of her thoughts. Woolen threads running here and there are yet to be pulled and looked at closely. Presented in the second part of the exhibition, her large inner landscapes are experienced by moving from a short, medium or long distance. Info: Galerie George-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, 33 rue de Seine, Paris, Duration: 25/1-3/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-12:00-14:00-19:30, www.galerie-vallois.com

The exhibition ”Kinetic Landscapes (1969-2016)”, is dedicated to Paul Kos. Desert and mountainous landscapes from the American West provide the backdrop and inspiration for this new survey, which includes an ensemble of kinetic sculptures and video installations, as well as a selection of photographs and drawings. A prominent figure of Conceptual Art in the Bay Area since the 1960s, Paul Kos is known for his dynamic use of natural substances and his overall predilection for simple materials or objects in relation to a given site. Whether they are indigenous to the environment within which he chooses to create, or they relate to its folklore in a broader way, these elements always playfully animate and sometimes even complete his artworks ranging from performance-based films, videos and photographs, to kinetic sculptures and installations. At the crossroads with Land Art and Arte Povera, his practice is also a quintessence of the wittiness that distinguishes conceptualism on the West Coast from its rather austere yet historically dominant counterpart in New York. Info: Galerie George-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, 33 rue de Seine, Paris, Duration: 25/1-3/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-12:00-14:00-19:30, www.galerie-vallois.com

Trained as engineers before their art education an in France and particularly sensitive to undetectable changes in nature, be it the sun, the stars or the passage of time, the artist duo Jingfang Hao and Lingjie Wang propose a vision poetic of these changes while exposing them to the view of all. For “La lumière n’existe pas”, their solo exhibition, several works and installations that constitute highlights in their work in recent years have been produced, re-activated or presented for the first time, with the main focus of the artists’ reflection around the light. In “Sun Drawings”, artists invite the sun to draw each day using a device consisting of a base, a magnifying glass, and thermal paper. During the day, the rays of the sun pass through the magnifying glass, to concentrate in a point of light, which point will leave its mark on the thermal paper. The movement of the sun in one day forms, not a task but a feature, composed of the accumulation of tasks on paper, following the course of the sun, and the environment. Info: Galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou, 45 rue Chapon, Paris, Duration: 27/1-24/2/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://annesarahbenichou.com

José María Sicilia is one of the leading painters in a new generation of artists that burst onto the scene in the ‘80s. Once he had completed his studies in the Facultad de Bellas Artes in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Sicilia came under the influence of Neo-Expressionist art. Over the years, the evolution in his painting has led him to become a contemplative, reflective painter who pays particular attention to the analysis of abstraction. José María Sicilia in his solo exhibition “Phasma” presents a new body of work entitled “La Locura del ver” (2015-16). These abstract paintings mixing colorful shapes translating birdsongs, and silk embroideries, interpret Thomas Young’s experience of 1801’s interferences, a scientific observation that determines the light’s undulatory nature. Simultaneously, the artist also presents “Phasma” (2017), a series of new drawings and poems, created in Japan these last few months, and dealing with the feeling of suicide, life struggle and ephemerality. Info: Galerie Chantal Crousel, 10, rue Charlot, Paris, Duration: 27/1-3/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.crousel.com

An exhibition with works by Jean-Michel Atlan is on show at galerie frank elbaz. Jean-Michel Atlan left Istanbul in 1930 to study philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris where he also worked as a teacher afterwards. During the occupation, Jean-Michel Atlan lost his teaching license because he was Jewish and lived in poverty in Montparnasse. During that time, Atlan taught himself painting. Due to his contribution to the Résistance, the artist was arrested in 1942 and interned in the Saint-Anne hospital for two years after he had pretended to suffer from a mental disease.  In the sanatorium, Atlan encountered a world beyond the realms of everyday thinking which left a remaining imprint on his work.  In 1944 the artist had his first exhibition and published a collection of poems. In 1946 he was able to present his work to the public alongside great personalities like Braque and Matisse for the first time. From 1945 Atlan produced fantastical, abstract animal shapes which were strongly influenced by the COBRA group. Around 1956 his style was consolidated: Strong, black, winding lines enclosing pastel colored areas, which evoke organic and vegetable associations. In 1956 Atlan achieved his breakthrough as an artist with a poster, he designed for the exhibition of the new “École de Paris” at the Charpentier gallery and an exhibition at the Bing gallery in Paris. In 1960 the artist died from cancer. Info: Galerie frank elbaz, 66 rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 27/1-24/2/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galeriefrankelbaz.com

Samuel Gratacap’s solo exhibition entitled “Plus Près” looks back at seven years of hi swork around the Mediterranean ring. This exhibition is a dialogue between various photographic works that give an overview of his travel and encounters.  as the artist says “For the first time–since I deeply care about the singularity of places and their time-related context-, I chose to draw connections between images from both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. Here, my trip is the subject matter, plus près.” Since 2007, Samuel Gratacap has used photography to document the lives of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Rather than adhering to the narratives of collective shock and tragedy so often visually depicted in mass media coverage, Gratacap’s work quietly shifts the gaze back towards the individual, instead choosing to focus on the extensive periods of time that refugees spend imprisoned, trapped and waiting during their journey. Info: Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, 17 rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, Paris, Duration: 27/1-24/2/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:30, www.fillesducalvaire.com

Ange Leccia is one of the pioneers of video art in France. Since the early 1980s, his work has explored the human dimension through the combination of light and images. Matthew Darbyshires works turn shop-bought domestic comfort into fertile seeds of doubt and discontent, suggesting dissensus might in fact be a more productive register than consensus. In their join exhibition Ange Leccia and Matthew Darbyshire make a dialogue about fetishism. With “Poussière d’étoiles/Stardust”, Leccia takes the use of images from his personal archives to its height.  The matter of the super 8 film and the TV screen vibrates dizzily to capture the energy of the projection.  In contrast, Matthew Darbyshire’s transparent resin objects seem marked by a cruel fixedness.  But his 3D x-rays also present the fingerprints which Roxman Gatt left behind during his performances after handling these same objects. A form of eroticism thus permeates the whole exhibition in a continual seesaw between the warmth of bodies and the cold expression of our digital worlds. Info: Jousse Enterprise-Art Contemporain, 6 Rue Saint-Claude, Paris, Duration: 27/1-24/2/18, Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.jousse-entreprise.com

In “Nous sommes là”, his solo exhibition Marcos Carrasquer crudely depicts on paper, or on canvas, a bruised humankind. He does not bother with limits, barriers; he strips naked the human being with all his flaws and vices. But Marcos Carrasquer inserts in his works a cutting humour which allows the viewers to distance themselves from subjects which are sometimes violent, sometimes sad, sometimes poetic. These scenes, between nightmare and dream, give the artist the chance to mix tragic and grotesque. Through this micro-exploration of human cruelty, of the expression of nightmare and violence there is also the emergence of hope. Marcos Carrasquer’s pieces require to take a long, careful look in order to notice every detail since all is linked in his work. The smallest detail has its reason for being Marcos Carrasquer is an « exile » of the art whose work keeps reminding us, spectators, the fragility of our current condition. Info: Galerie Polaris, 15 rue des Arquebusiers, Paris, Duration: 27/1-24/2/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://galeriepolaris.fr

Latin America has only left us with a few collections of asylum works. Prof. Honorio Delgado, had gathered a rich collection of almost 1500 works during his career. His collection is only known today by some rare specialists or through Vol. 11 of Psychopathology of Expression, published in 1965, in which the psychiatrist delves into the case study of a schizophrenic painter. Half a century after the death of Delgado, a set of works ascribed to the last of his patients. christian berst art brut presents “otro mundo”, an exhibition with works by John Ricardo Cunningham (1918-1991. Cunningham’s work inevitably evokes that of a certain Carlo Zinelli, born at the same time but on this side of the Atlantic. As with the latter, the watercolors –most often produced with a primary palette– are very narrative and filled with symbols, iterations, incongruities, and texts that are at times elliptical, at times descriptive. Works inhabited by silhouettes of gentlemen wearing tailcoats, canes and top hats, by birds and other creatures frequently wearing a hat, all evolving at the among curious planispheres and (geo)political references that seem to indicate that the artist wanted to call on us to bear witness to the state of the world. Info: christian berst art brut, 3-5 passage des Gravilliers, (entrance 10 rue chapon), Paris, Duration: 27/1-27/2/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 14:00-19:00, www.christianberst.com

In “Frozen Orbit”, Henrik Samuelsson presents a series of eleven paintings by created between 2012 and 2017. The entirety of the series unfold a non linear tale during a short time before dawn, where each canvas accurately punctuates the eleven minutes that compose this moment, following the irregular rhythm of a silent metronome. Through a game of correspondences where landscape, splinters of architecture and skies respond to one another, the scenes reveal random parallels and disorientating symmetries: awakening and sleep, white moon and black moon, absence and presence… Each work, while keeping the strength of its singularity, finds a partial reflection, distorted or reversed in the other paintings of the series. The chromatic spectrum is reduced to four shades: a subdued white referring to the physical and prehensile world, another white, luminous, immaterial and therefore inaccessible, an intermediate gray left by the ebb of light, and a deep black summoning the darkness. Info: Galerie Laurent Godin, 36 bis rue Eugène Oudiné, Paris, Duration: 28/1-17/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.laurentgodin.com