MIRAGES LVI
In the International Art Scene October is the month devoted to Paris. The whole city and we are living in the rhythm of big exhibitions:
Founded in Paris in 1974, FIAC (Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain) for its 46th edition, which will take place from 17 to 20 October 2019, brings together 197 galleries from 29 countries. FIAC’s signature program, FIAC Projects, will present some 30 sculptures and installations within the exhibition rooms and grounds of the Petit Palais, in the environs of the Grand Palais and on the Avenue Winston Churchill, pedestrianized during FIAC week. FIAC Hors les Murs 2019 will present an ensemble of over 20 outdoor works in the Jardin Tuileries, together with a solo exhibition of the British artist Glenn Brown at the musée national Eugène-Delacroix. On Place Vendôme, FIAC Hors les Murs extends a carte blanche invitation to the legendary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama to create an in situ artwork for this historically and symbolically charged Parisian venue. In development of its Hors les Murs program, for the second consecutive year FIAC presents an ephemeral village of architectural projects on the most iconic of all Parisian squares, the Place de la Concorde.
Throughout the years, Paris Internationale established itself as a new model in the ecosystem of international contemporary art fairs. The 5th edition of Paris Internationale invited 42 galleries coming from 14 countries. The fair will take place between October 16 and October 20 at 16 rue Alfred de Vigny. The professional preview will take place on October 15.
In Grand Palais two major Retrospectives will inaugurate this month: “Greco” is the first major exhibition in France ever to be dedicated to this artist. Domenico Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco, undertook his initial apprenticeship in the Byzantine tradition before refining his training in Venice and then Rome. However, it was in Spain that his art flourished, firmly taking root from the 1577s. His work gave El Greco a unique place in the history of painting, as the last grand master of the Renaissance and the first great painter of the Golden Age. The exhibition “Toulouse-Lautrec. Resolutely Modern” intends to view his work in a lineage of expressive realism, both scathing and knowing, in the style of Daumier, Manet and Degas. At 17, Lautrec the novice had already declared his intention to depict “the real, not the ideal”, before developing his vigorous naturalism into an incisive and caustic style influenced by Japan, photography and the Impressionists. Sparked by the fast pace and new inventions of the modern world, Lautrec also produced images in movement, with an almost cinematic quality.
From October 15, Jeu de Paumme inaugurates 3 exhibitions: Over 160 photographs have gathered for the exhibition “Peter Hujar: Speed of Life”, his portraits of people, animals, and landscapes, as well as his documentation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with its exquisite black-and-white tonalities, were extremely influential. Zineb Sedira lives in London and work in Paris, London and Algiers. Her solo exhibition “A brief moment” spans the period from 1998 to the present day and embraces such diverse media as video, film, installation and photography. In Satellite 12 programme Daisuke Kosugi constructs seductive scenarios that entail an underlying conflict between personal freedom and systems in film, sculpture, performance and text.
Centre Pompidou continues its re-examination of key 20th Century works by devoting a major exhibition to Francis Bacon. “Francis Bacon: Books and Painting” presents paintings dating from 1971, the year of the retrospective event at the national galleries of the Grand Palais, to his final works in 1992. It consists of 60 paintings, including 12 triptychs, in addition to a series of portraits and self-portraits. The exhibition “Calais. Témoigner de la «Jungle»“ explores in three ways: Bruno Serralongue and his documentary project “Calais” (2006-18), the clichés of the Agence France Press diffused by the media, and the soundings of habitat ancestors of the “Jungle”, the situation of refuge and exile installed in a camp site adjacent to Calais, renamed the “Jungle”. It existed from January 2015 to October 2016.
Don’t miss the exhibition “Sigmar Polke’s photographic Infamies” at Le Bal, it has already started but it really is very interesting. Polke’s photos are of an aesthetic and ethical position that is profoundly libertarian. Polke did not try to “save” painting by photography, or to ennoble photography by painting, following a rather stale notion of contemporary rhetoric. On the contrary, he amplified the two enemy sisters’ bad reputations. On October 10, in his re-use of photographic and cinematographic archives, Deimantas Narkevicius aims both to renew a lost moment and to re-read an existing imaginary.
for those who haven’t visit it yet, at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain until 5/1/19 runs the exhibition “Trees”. Bringing together a community of artists, botanists, and philosophers, the exhibition echoes the latest scientific research that sheds new light on trees. Organized around several large ensembles of works, the exhibition gives voice to numerous figures who, through their aesthetic or scientific journey, have developed a strong, intimate link with trees, thereby revealing the beauty and biological wealth of these great protagonists of the living world, threatened today with large-scale deforestation.
On the occasion of its re-opening after extensive renovation work, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris presents “La fabrique du geste” a retrospective of work by the painter Hans Hartung. With a tightly focused selection of 300 works from various International Collections, the visitor is introduced to the wide range of media, the wealth of technical innovations and the array of tools used during six prolific decades. For Hartung experimentation was all-important, as was the uncompromising, conceptually inflected modernism he embodied. The essays on colour and format as a rigorous studio methodology, together with framing, photography, enlargement, repetition and identical reproduction of quite a few of his works, were all elements of his research into the original and the authentic and have lost nothing of their relevance today
Finally, do not forget the artists and the architects whose names are interwoven with this month, at the column “Traces” the artists: Walter de Maria, Meret Oppenheim, Sophie Calle, Carolee Schneemann, Pino Pascalli, Pablo Picasso, Takis, Mike Kelley. As for the Architects they are: Le Corbusier, Richard Meier, Paulo Mendes de la Rocha, Kazuyo Sejima.
Not to be missed is Giuseppe Penone’s exhibition in the context of FIAC 2019. The artist will set up a monumental work entitled “Matrice di Linfa (Lifeblood matrix)” at the Palais d’Iéna. To discover for free from October 15 to 27, 2019.
Good Month (!)
3/10/19
Efi Michalarou
*Photo: Palais d’Iéna, exhibiton simulation, October 2019. Giuseppe Penone, Matrice di linfa, 2008. Fir tree, resin, terracotta, leather, metal. 131 x 4500 x 212 cm. Photo: © CESE Benoît Fougeirol, © Palais d’Iéna, architect Auguste. Perret, UFSE, SAIF. Courtesy Archivio Penone and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris/London