ART CITIES:Paris
On the occasion a series of art events and openings that have inundated Paris, this and next week, from openings of exhibition in galleries and museums, to the three different Art Fairs, we focus on small and big today’s openings of exhibitions in the galleries of the city and present them to you…
By Efi Michalarou
The Chinese artist Li Wei is presenting “Still Nobody Cares – the Death of the Toy”. The first living “toy” which is offered to a child, particularly in China, is often a chick. Favorite “toy” for “developing the sense of compassion in children.” However, the result is obvious; the chicks are dying one after the other. Sacrificed for the human needs. For the latter, the death of his “toy” is what is most difficult to bear. But in reality, no one really cares about the one who died, the man only manifests his dissatisfaction with the impression of seeing his own life affected. As the artist said “During the opening of my exhibition I will invite more than 300 people to come and participate in my performance project “Still Nobody Cares”. As for what they will do with me during the performance, I can not reveal anything now. The result will be revealed on the opening day”. Info: A2Z Art Gallery, 24 Rue de l’Echaudé, Paris, Duration: 17/10-7/11/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.a2z-art.com
The group exhibition “Free Admission” indirectly addresses the question of open access, a concept that has been generalized on the social networks, as users gain free and open access to cultural, scientific, philosophic and economic content. This generous spirit of free access also applies within the specific context of the art world, if that is you take into account the fact that, like ideas, creativity is free, and that numerous visual artists of the 21st century have cast aside all conventions, movements and schools of thought. Info: Praz-Delavallade, 5 Rue des Haudriettes, Paris, Duration: 17/10-21/11/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.praz-delavallade.com
The theory of the five elements is an ancient way of describing and analyzing the world. For the Western civilization, it was invented by the Greek Philosophers and similar theories existed as well in other civilizations, particularly in Asia. Based on the idea that all the materials constituting our planet are composed of one or several of these five elements (Air, Water, Earth, Fire, and Ether/Metal) in greater or lesser quantities, as is the human body, which regulates their function, the exhibition “Quinte-Essence — air eau terre feu ether” presents artists whose main characteristic is to have worked principally with their environment and to have integrated these elements into the very heart of their artistic practice. Info: Galerie Jaeger Bucher, 5 & 7 Rue de Saintonge, Paris, Duration: 17/10-19/12/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galeriejaegerbucher.com
In the exhibition’s “Inconnaissance-Terres” third part, the collective has turned towards an elementary way of working: the forms and materials taken up are the result of combinations and chance or organic growth, such as damp or dry earth, loose or friable, the results of unintended chemical encounters. The exhibition will be complemented by satellite events: two solo shows by Yoan Béliard and Vincent Vallade, a homage to Ali Altuntas and a Video Week. Info: Le6b, 6-10 Quai de Seine, Saint-Denis, Duration: 17-31/10/15, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu 14:30-18:00, Fri 14:30-16:30, www.le6b.fr
The first solo exhibition in France of Cass Rodrigo is composed of unreleased videos and sculptures with the title “Espaço Liberto”. The title of the exhibition refers to the work of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, who is interested in the “organic line”, the border between the frame and the senior of the work, called in his texts espaço liberto or released space. In the visual metaphors of his videos, sculptures and drawings, the artist points out the materiality of items (through color intensity, texture objects and the brutality of the actions) to find meaning in poetic, political and spiritual, beyond what is obvious and visible in the work. Info: MdM Gallery, 6 Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, Paris, Duration: 17/10-15/12/15, www.mdmgallery.com
Franco Bellucci, began creating objects at the end of the ‘70s, thus channeling his destructive inclinations and reconciling them, through the frequent use of toys, with the state of immaturity that the onset of encephalitis had restricted him to at a very young age. Deprived of speech, he then began to tirelessly produce, through hybridization, objects that at times seem transitional, at times like fetishes. If, in Franco Bellucci’s work, the idea of reconstruction imposes itself in the first place, it cannot suffice once we are familiar with how he made his works. Indeed, how could we not be taken by Bellucci’s immutable ritual, holding the objects that he ties, twists, kneads, bruises and recomposes against his stomach. Info: Galerie Christian Berst Art Brut, 3-5, Passage des Gravilliers, Paris, Duration: 17/10-21/11/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 14:00-19:00, www.christianberst.com
The strength of Stéphanie Saadé’s work lies in it being both conceptual and sensitive. This is partly due to her use of reduced means which benefits richness of meaning. Impossible love, made of two threads, one rising from the ground, the other coming down from the ceiling, and joining in their centre, forms a minimal installation. Apart from the means used, what is emphasized is the perception of the meeting of what rises from the ground and what comes down from above, a rare and difficult encounter made possible by the artist. Info: Galerie Anne Barrault, 51 Rue des Archives, Paris, Duration: 17/10-21/11/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galerieannebarrault.com
A 2006 graduate from the École nationale supérieure des Arts-Décoratifs, Raphaël Denis invents processes from which he develops series. This conceptual dimension comes to life in works associating impertinence and solemnity. In his exhibition “La Loi Normale des Erreurs & Développements”, the works of Raphaël Denis provide the viewer with reflection apparatuses in which often simple and radical productions invite to meditate on grey areas and on what is hidden from view. Info: Galerie Sator, Passage des Gravilliers-10 Rue Chapon, Paris, Duration: 17/10-27/11/15, Days 7 Hours: Tue-Sat 14:00-19:00, http://galeriesator.com
Sterling Ruby’s first solo exhibition in Paris occupies both spaces of Gagosian Gallery. Cultivating an eclectic formalism across mediums, Ruby creates vivid poured-polyurethane sculptures, drawings, collages, richly glazed ceramics, spray paintings, and videos. Oscillating between solid and liquid, minimalist and expressionist, pristine and abject, he alludes to rituals both mainstream and marginal, autobiography, and art history. Intellectually, frontiers interest him, from urban gang territories demarcated in graffiti to the charting of newly discovered stars and planets. In his work, Ruby tests formal limits, marking the edges of the canvas and limning the boundaries between creation, destruction, and renewal. In abstract paintings, acts of defacement evolve into a painterly sublime; while wood-burning stoves, ceramic basins containing shards of broken or misfired pottery, and soft sculptures resembling fanged jaws convey the raw potential of sculpture. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris & 26 Avenue de l’Europe, Le Bourget, Duration: 18/10-19/12/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.gagosian.com
Without limits, this is how Henrique Oliveira’s world is being developed and written. It really seems that no space is large enough for his utopias. His organic constructions, often monumental, present themselves as overflowing illusions. They display an outpouring of life, overtaking by far the given contours: walls, partitions, ceilings all yield one after the other in its path. For this exhibition entitled “Fissure”, an installation will renew this site specific approach, leaving its mark on the gallery while deeply transforming it. Info: Galerie Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois, 36, Rue de Seine, Paris, Duration: 19/10-28/11/15, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat: 10:30-13:00 & 14:00-19:00, www.galerie-vallois.com