ART CITIES:Paris-Openings 13-19/10/18
By re-appropriating and working with ordinary objects, Pierre Ardouvin’s artistic research questions such notions as authenticity and illusion. As he recycles and reassembles, he evokes familiar images that are sustained by both his own and collective memories, either drawn from popular culture or domestic life. For his solo exhibition “Hôtel de l’Univers”, Pierre Ardouvin has drawn inspiration from Rimbaud’s journeys to Yemen and Ethiopia from 1878 onwards and the poet’s stay at the henceforth ultra famous Hotel de l’Univers in Aden. The results of this face-to-face encounter between the work of Ardouvin and Rimbaud are astonishing in their modernity, despite the many decades that separate the two men. They reveal feelings of abandonment and a lack of connection with one’s descendants, traits that are proper to people who have been uprooted. Pierre Ardouvin finds inspiration in current events, which he fashions in reference to a form of collective imagination, one whose barriers have been removed, where everyone has been set free from obedience to class, gender or age and where they can therefore find a space of identification. Info: Praz Delavallade, 5 rue des Haudrietes, Paris, Duration: 13/10-17/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.praz-delavallade.com
Entitled “The Border is a State of Mind”, the exhibition gathers the works of seven artists: Babi Badalov, Eric Baudelaire, Bady Dalloul, Nikita Kadan, Kapwani Kiwanga, Sophie Ristelhueber and Société Réaliste. The exhibition will be on presentation both at Galerie Jérôme Poggi and at the Grand Palais during FIAC. In the exhibition’s founding statement, the curator Sasha Pevak puts into perspective the unachieved utopia of the 20th Century, a possible ‘world without borders’, and the state of our present world, in which erecting walls seem to be ‘promises of a safer and more prosperous future’ from the standpoint of certain politicians and media. “Instruments of colonization, borders represent a symbol of violence endured by the colonized nations thoughout History, bearing witness to past and present conflicts’, states the curator. Info: Curator: Sasha Pevak, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2 rue Beaubourg, Paris, Duration: 13/10-17/11/1, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galeriepoggi.com
First gallery exhibition of Lindsay Caldicott’s mysterious and haunting photocollages is entitled “x ray memories”. The body of work by Lindsay Caldicott (born in 1956 in Leicester, and died after taking her own life in the same city in 2014) radiates in such a way that it momentarily silences the dichotomies between Art Brut and Contemporary Art. Rather than following in the footsteps of the quarrel over the sex of angels, it invites us to examine the pathways, the crevices through which flows one singular creative fluid. The tragic destiny of Lindsay Caldicott, rather than offering us an interpretive key to her work, pushes us nonetheless to seek the substance of her art in it, and to try to comprehend its nature. This professional radiographer only interrupted her short career twice, first to obtain her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Middlesex in London in 1984, before returning to work at a hospital in Amsterdam, and then in 1990, due to her internment for schizophrenia. Yet, it was during this difficult period that Lindsay gathered the sediments of her past to produce her great body of work from it. Info: Christian Berst Art Brut, 3-5 passage des Gravilliers, Paris, Duration: 13/10-24/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 14:00-19:00, www.christianberst.com
Ryan Gander presents his solo exhibition “Old Languages in Very Modern Styles”. The artist has established an international reputation through artworks that materialize in many different forms , from sculpture to film, writing, graphic design, installation, performance and more besides. Through associative thought processes that connect the everyday and the esoteric, the overlooked and the commonplace, Gander’s work involves a questioning of language and knowledge, as well as a reinvention of both the modes of appearance and the creation of an artwork. His work can be reminiscent of a puzzle, or a network with multiple connections and the fragments of an embedded story. It is ultimately a huge set of hidden clues to be deciphered, encouraging viewers to make their own associations and invent their own narrative in order to unravel the complexities staged by the artist. Info: GB Agency, 18 rue des 4 Fils, Paris, Duration: 13/10-24/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-13:00 & 14:00-19:00, www.gbagency.fr
Through bold expressionist brushwork, surrealist methodology, computer-generated lines, and an acute awareness of the self-conscious act of painting, Oehlen fearlessly engages with the history of abstraction, multiplying the potential of visual codes through processes of layering and erosion. Central to his expansive oeuvre is the innate freedom of the creative act. New paintings by Albert Oehlen are on presentation at the exhibition “SEXE, RELIGION, POLITIQUE”. Painted on Alubond in oil and lacquer, these new works contain echoes of Oehlen’s previous series-crudely drawn figures, smears of artificial pigments, and combinations of various rules and constraints—yet yield entirely new results. The paintings feature dynamic black lines and forms over fields of bright egg-yolk yellow. Sometimes the black paint is viscous like tar, and at others it is matte and opaque, as Oehlen seamlessly transitions between thick fluidity and sharp angularity. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris, Duration: 13/10/18-21/12/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://gagosian.com
Lisa Beck’s work has always been driven by certain preoccupations and obsessions, that can be seen as divided between the particular and the universal. Rainier Lericolais’ works both plastic and musical meet in the notion of recorded memory. He collects artefacts and symbols in many cultural stratums, gathering it to compose visual, sound or spatical works in which he mixes musical, cinematic, plastic and literary references. One work in the exhibition, “L’invention de Morel”, refers to the eponym short story by argentinian writter Adolfo Bioy Casares who, after sinking, find shelter on an island where each day repeats on loop. In the end he finds out that the island works like a daily played big disc. This first exhibition of Rainier Lericolais’ sculptures in dialogue with Lisa Beck’s paintings present one of his main line of work: abstraction and representation of the sound, especially through the issue of recording. This subject can also be revealed in his paper works: photograms, oscillograms, scannograms, (records from light into vibrating waves), vinyls prints (Phantτmes).This ability to imprint an experienced moment on a medium – and its fragility – are obsessional topics for Rainier Lericolais. It enable him to think about the conditions for an object to appear in its time context. Info: Galerie Thomas Bernard Cortex Athletico, 13 Rue des Arquebusiers, Paris, Duration: 13/10-17/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-19:00, www.galeriethomasbernard.com
Markus Lüpertz’s solo exhibition includes sculptures and paintings from 2008 to 2018. Markus Lüpertz came of age in postwar West Germany during the late 1950s, fascinated by cinema. He recalls that movies inspired the serial aspect of his work, his development of individual motifs in multiple variations. Lüpertz’s images combine cultural evocation with material invention. To a palette, he joins a skull and a helmet to form a still-life arrangement; these objects, thematically rich, interact not only as cultural references but as contours, shapes, and colors. Interpretive narratives applied to Lüpertz’s art eventually fail, the victim of his sensory excess and thematic contradiction. He is an artist of powerful instinct, whose pictorial strategies defy the single-mindedness of our habitual critical constructions. Hyperactivity, both physical and mental, is his norm. His polychromed sculptures are as dynamically and evocatively composed as his paintings. Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 64 Rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 13/10-24/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.alminerech.com
The exhibition “Southern Geometries, from Mexico to Patagonia” celebrates the wealth of color and diversity of styles in the geometric art of Latin America, bringing together 250 artworks made by over 70 artists from the Pre-Columbian period to present. Including modernist abstract art, sculpture and architecture as well as ceramics, weaving, and body painting, the exhibition explores the wide range of approaches to geometric abstraction in Latin America, whether influenced by Pre-Columbian art, the European avant-garde or Amerindian cultures. Southern Geometries weaves visual relationships among diverse cultures and regions across time, inviting visitors to discover the vibrant patterns and designs of Latin American art. The exhibition also takes a look at the mysterious formal vocabulary of indigenous geometry. These motifs are represented on ceramics, basketry, textiles and the human body, and are combined in many different ways using styles specific to each culture. Numerous works created by the Ishir Indians (or Chamacoco) of Paraguay for their ceremonies and rituals are presented here for the first time in Europe. Info: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 261, Boulevard Raspail, Paris, Duration 14/10/18-24/2/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-20:00, Thu 11:00-22:00, www.fondationcartier.com
Spread over multiple floors of Cité internationale des arts Galerie, Bienvenue Art Fair presents a set of strong and demanding proposals and claims a desire to favor an intimate format, conveying a dialogue with the artworks. The deliberately reduced number of participants (20 French and international galleries) makes it possible to offer everyone a space that is open to experimentation while placing each participant at the heart of a larger whole. Having an innovative format and scheduled to last two weeks, Bienvenue is a cross between a fair and a collective exhibition. Its founding principle is the desire to draw attention to galleries that particularly focus on the future by promoting, revealing, exploring and enriching the art scene. As a platform for meetings and exchanges, Bienvenue brings together amateurs, collectors, artists and galleries in a historic and highly symbolic place. In a spirit of decompartmentalization, Bienvenue thus claims a radical innocence, necessary for experimentation, while emphasizing the plurality of artistic approaches that the galleries support. The philosophy behind the Fair is to create, through direct interactions, a connection between art, artists, gallery owners and the public. Info: Bienvenue Art Fair, Cité internationale des arts, 18 Rue de l’Hôtel de ville, Paris, Duration: 16-27/10/18, Admission: free by invitation, to download on Bienvenue Art Fair’s website, http://bienvenue.art
Works by Michael Heizer, dating from 1968 to the present, are on presentation at Gagosian Gallery Over fifty years, Heizer has redefined the very idea of sculpture in his explorations of size, mass, and process. His earth-moving constructions, paintings, and drawings explore the dynamics of positive and negative space. As a young artist in New York in the 1960s, Heizer began making “displacement paintings,” geometric canvases in light and dark tones. In the winter of 1967, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, he excavated several chasms in the earth, adapting the New York paintings to three dimensions. These “un-sculptures,” or “sculptures in reverse,” became the basis of a new sculptural vocabulary, as Heizer began using the land, and its removal, as his media. The exhibition includes three paintings from the 1970s, in geometric shapes and dark and light tones. A triptych of paintings from 2017, (Untitled), is shown for the first time. The curved canvases are related to the earlier “Munich Optical Paintings” from 1972, and to the 1969 Munich Depression sculpture. The diagrammatic forms of the recent paintings echo the suggestion, present in the earlier works, of seeing beyond vision’s periphery. Vitrines installed in an ante-gallery contain archival materials from Heizer’s files, including original painting studies. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 26 avenue de l’Europe, Le Bourget, Duration: 16/10/18-22/2/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com
For his solo exhibition “Outsourced Affects”, Davide Balula hones in on human functions that relate to emotion, empathy and focus. He has created mechanisms which consume, redistribute or abstract body fluids and brain activity. Saliva, tears, sweat and bile, all synthetically produced in a laboratory for the show, have never come in contact with the world of the body, the biome, a person’s unique set of bacteria, which incidentally, cause these secretions to release their distinctive body odor. The disposable fluids, which your body secretes and abandons, are circulated throughout the gallery via rudimentary machines which act as proxies for basic body functions. For instance, with “Automated Tear Drop”, synthetic tears stream down a chain into a kick bucket, effectively creating a crying machine so you don’t have to waste your own tears. The works in the exhibition which remotely cry, breathe, spit, etc. function as poetic simulacra to our current technological moment, where machines are increasingly part of our everyday lives, inseparable from how we think, communicate and feel. Emails and text messages have replaced phone calls, emoji have replaced words.Info: Galerie Frank Elbaz, 66 rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 18/10-15/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galeriefrankelbaz.com
Karl Lagerfeld’s exhibition “Architectures” is an art collection of functional sculptures designed by Karl Lagerfeld and inspired by Antiquity, referred to as the origin of beauty, culture and modernity by the designer. Evoking a contemporary architectural landscape with Greek origins, the works combine the precision of canonical proportions born from the use of the golden ratio and the most noble material, marble. Each work is carved from a carefully selected marble block, the Arabescato Fantastico, a rare vibrant white marble with dark grey veins which has not been quarried for more than thirty years, or black Nero Marquina marble, curated for its brush stroke-like, milky white veins. The combination of the material uniqueness with the timeless designs makes every piece exclusive. Only available as limited edition of eight pieces in each marble color, plus four artist proofs, each sculptural work is made with the special marble, which is then precisely cut, sculpted, faceted and polished in Italy by the best craftsmen, to achieve the vibrant exactness of the elements. Info: Carpenters Workshop Gallery, 54 rue de la Verrerie, Paris, Duration: 19/10-22/12/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-19:00, http://carpentersworkshopgallery.com