ART CITIES:Geneva-Look West,Young Man!
“Go west, young man, go West” was an expression first used by John Babsone Lane Soule in the Terre Haute Express in 1851. It appealed to Horace Greeley, who rephrased it slightly in an editorial in the New York Tribune on 13 July 1865: “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.” When the phrase gained popularity, Greeley printed Soule’s article to show the source of his inspiration.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Xippas Gallery Archive
The phrase captured the imaginations of clerks, mechanics, and soldiers returning from the Civil War, many of whom moved west to take up a homestead. Many years later, the 1980s sign a new conquest: the recognition of Los Angeles as an internationally recognized artistic capital, offering itself as an alternative to the New York scene. In the group exhibition “Look West, Young Man!” at Xippas Gallery in Geneva are on presentation some works of the biggest names of the Californian art scene and a selection of artworks by Xippas artists, these artworks show their artists’ inspiration by California, by its climate, its light and its geography, as by the cultural abundance that emanates from the Golden State. On presentation are works by: Yves Bélorgey, Rhona Bitner, Jeremy Dickinson, Richard Jackson, Raffi Kalenderian, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Dean Monogenis, Bruce Nauman, Richard Nonas, Raymond Pettibon, Matthew Porter, Pepa Prieto, Bettina Rheims and Jim Shaw. Since the 1990s, Yves Belorgey focuses on architectural modernism by representing the urban landscape. His paintings and drawings incorporate a rich and polymorphic visual, which surpasses mere objective documentation of modernist residential architecture. Rhona Bitner explores the parallel between theater and photography – in both one enters a black box and an image appears. Her work is a visual investigation into the experience of theater and spectacle via the static surface of a photograph. Each aspect of this experience is rigorously observed, studied and inventoried. Individual projects take years to complete. The reproduction of all kinds of vehicle on canvas unveils Jeremy Dickinson’s lifetime passion for means of transportation such as buses, cars or even cranes and containers. Dickinson is fascinated by these miniatures as when he was a child. If, at first glance, these paintings seem to be representing reality, the model collector will quickly understand that they are in fact only toys. Dean Monogenis paintings evoke surroundings composed by architectural elements associated to more natural ones. He depicts unfinished buildings, colorful scaffoldings, residential buildings in the middle of rocky landscapes covered by vegetation; sometimes under a stormy sky or a colored abyss. Monogenis refers to a permanent state of transition and mutation, a fight between urbanisation and nature that resists to this invasion. Matthew Porter uses experiments from old and new technologies to explore possibilities in image construction and manipulation. Full of historical and cultural references, his photographs create multiple and complex worlds within the same frame. For Matthew Porter, photographic film is akin to a canvas: the transparency of the negative enables him to inscribe lines of light upon the surface, layer by layer, thereby creating an intricate agglomerate of shapes. Although, Pepa Prieto’s work shares a lot in common with the familiar gender of still life and abstraction, each painting reveals the language she uses to explore memory and personal narratives. The way Pepa Prieto builds her compositions is a tool to retrieve and forge new connections between disparate pieces of memory. Through their visual realignment on the canvas, they get a meaning.
Info: Xippas Gallery, Rue des Bains 61, 1205, Geneva, Duration: 6-28/7/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 14:00-18:30, Sat 12:00-17:00, www.xippas.com
