ART CITIES:Paris Openings 9/1/16

For Juliendes Des Monstiers, each painting constitutes a whole, the different styles of which can be understood in their entirety that ultimately gives them meaning. A holistic painting that cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts and that eludes any pre-established definition. From borrowed shapes and gestures with no hierarchy, to the medium’s great stories. In his exhibition “À l’ombre des meteorites”, works painted on canvas or on wood, on the floor or on a wall, depending on its needs, in a constant back-and-forth motion. Imprints by transfer, as he has always done but also precise gestures, slow or swift, made with brushes of course, but also other miscellaneous tools like sticks and even, why not, if he feels like it, marbles. Everything is grasp-worthy for an artist who considers the chassis as a frame on which to build his own territory, made of borrowings and inventions. Info: Galerie Christophe Gaillard, 5 Rue Chapon, Paris, Duration: 9/41-27/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:30-12:20 & 14:00-19:00, Sat 12:00-19:00, http://galeriegaillard.com

Polly Tootal creates photographic works that hold strong ties to the country of their making. In her series “Unknown Places”, the artist notices the obscure, the quiet, and the everyday in the towns, villages and cities across her native UK, and imbues them with a strange, supernatural beauty in stunning, expansive images. Intending to make her viewers feel as if they are within the landscape of her photographs, Tootal captures her subjects using a medium-format architectural camera, which allows for large, but highly detailed, final images. In a process influenced by her university tutor, Magnum member Mark Power, and other topographic photographers, Tootal explores unknown regions where she allows for the possibility of instinctual responses to the landscapes she encounters. “I literally just go on journeys anywhere, could be to cities, coastlines, countryside, never really searching for anything specific”, she explains. “I’m just looking everywhere I go to ‘find’ a photo- graph”. Info: Galerie Intervalle, 12 rue Jouye Rouve, Paris, Duration: Wed-Fri 16:30-19:00, Sat: 12:00-19:00, www.galerie-intervalle.com

Paintings, sculptures? Objects, ceramics? Justin Adian’s works, presented for the first time in his solo exhibition in France “Waltz“, are difficult to define at first glance. It takes a moment before you can read past their apparent ambiguity. Whether they look like marouflage paintings, volumes hung on a wall, or delicious, abstract, dynamic works, the pieces that Justin Adian creates joyfully communicate a “can-do“ spirit. And in fact, the artist spends long hours in the studio, composing and recomposing, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing, bringing several forces into play. In this first showing ever of his ensemble of new works titled Waltz, new shapes spring to life as if inspired by musical notes, or as the fan of rock and punk music puts it, “from some other type of language”. Playing off each other as well as the space in the gallery and the visitor’s gaze, in the end, they make up a score just waiting to be played. Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 64 rue De Turenne, Paris, Duration 9/4-27/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.alminerech.com

Jordi Colomer’s work (films, photographs, sculptures or installations), is always recognisable. Often through the topics of town planning and architecture, the artist raises the question of utopias, humanist values, and daily dialogue with others. The exhibition “X-Ville” (2015), is a homage to the urban architect Yona Friedman. At the beginning of “X-Ville” a young woman tells us: “Our time is a time of utopias. There are many: the American ‘Way of Life’, Communism or Human Rights. They all have the capacity to mobilize the masses”. The film is inspired by various texts by philosopher and utopian architect Yona Friedman, specifically by his book, ‘Realizable Utopias’ (1974), a work that promotes alternative forms of organizing big cities, as collective answers to a dissatisfaction. Colomer’s film is constructed through collective situations, recreating images of alternative ways of organisation for the Metropolis. As part of the exhibition will be presented of “Svartlamon Parade” a film Jordi Colomer shot in the Norwegian city of Trondheim. The film centers on the matter of public space recapture, seen through the lens of the archives of the exuberant parades which were set in the city until the end of the ‘80s. Info: Michel Rein Gallery, 42 rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 9/41-27/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://michelrein.com

A founding member of the Supports/Surfaces group in the ‘70s, Daniel Dezeuze has spent forty years deconstructing the traditional media and materials of painting. His early interest in nomad and non-European cultures produced a reinterpretation of American art, both abstract and minimalist, in the ‘60s. Can we grasp a traveller’s journey? Or a butterfly’s flight? Daniel Dezeuze summons up the shades of Euclid and Lewis Carroll in a new exhibition punctuated by topological twists, Euclidian exclamations and cases-as-paintings. In “Tableaux-valises et dessins” the artist creates a concertinaing of colours and objet, paintings and drawings, floor-based and wall-based works. On the other side of the looking glass, paintings are cases, sculptures are paintings and drawings fly. Info: Galerie Daniel Templon, 30 rue Beaubourg, Paris, Duration: 9/1-20/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, www.danieltemplon.com

Oda’s Jaune in exhibition “Blue Skies”, features a series of brand new works, is dedicated to the idea of the possible and the imagination, the title chosen for the resolutely optimistic vision it conveys, a vision liberated from practical conventions. The exhibition reveals the artist’s obsessions, which she subjects to a constant process of change and reinvention by means of unexpected associations and formulations. Her distinctive universe draws on poetry, film and media culture, the history of art and her own history and is drawn to ‘everything that should not be said about the inner and the outer world.’ (A. Berland.) Oda Jaune uses paint to appropriate contemporary cultural images and unashamedly explore the images that lurk in the subconscious. She refuses labels, seeking rather to free herself from both artistic traditions and autobiography. Info: Galerie Daniel Templon, 30 rue Beaubourg, Paris, Duration: 9/1-20/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, www.danieltemplon.com