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Dynasty

I liked a few pieces at the current Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris/ Palais de Tokyo showcase of young french art stars. At the MAM, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC et le Palais de Tokyo, Théo Mercier’s resin/pasta sculpture, Le solitaire, was a more humanized version of Michel Blazy’s piece, Patman 2. Sad and hilarious, the stooped sphaghetti haired overweight “figure”, so completely out of place seemed like the loneliest creature in the world despite being a caricature of a caricature.

Yuhsin U. Chang’s Poussière installations were impressive stalactites created from the dust collected in both institutions’ air vents. The juxtaposition of monstrous, organic, forms with this potentially toxic, almost weightless, blend of materials in these  pieces created a poetic on our relationship to material reality.

Antoine Dorotte’s engravings on Zinc, particularly, Blow, at the Palais de Tokyo, caught my eye for their combination of graphic impact and minute technical detail. The works play with scale and encourage the viewer’s eye meander over the work in a meditative manner.

Dynasty is up through September.

55e Salon de Montrouge

I checked out this yearly emerging artists show in the suburbs and found work that sparked my curiosity, some clever one liners, and a lot of work that I was highly ambivalent about. The jury seems to privilege works that includes sexual innuendo or dead stuffed animals (note to self for my app. for next year…), though it is hard to generalize since there was quite a range of artists selected.

I liked Nicolas Durand’s installation, in which it wasn’t clear where the work (which included metal pipes lining the wall) began and where it ended. The show’s winner, Aymeric Ebrard showed an installation that consisted of found objects, fabricated elements, and prints. I wasn’t crazy about the marché aux puces stuff but I liked the golden key, and the last print. The key was literally multiplied upon itself- the object’s reflection was given physical form and attached to the object. When displayed the new object forced the viewer to do a double take upon realizing that the key’s supposed reflection was an actual object. Kirill Ukolov’s Sans Titre, 2010 plastic molds of an antique bust were a little repetitive of work I’ve seen elsewhere, but they were really really well displayed on white pedestals of varying sixes.

3 Good Things to See

So I usually go to Palais de Tokyo more to drink Japanese beer and people watch at the vernissages  than to actually admire new work. While I have enjoyed a few of the former exhibitions (Michel Blazy. Michel Blazy. Michel Blazy…), most of the time I leave the shows slightly disappointed (“Who decided that thing deserves anyone’s attention?!?).

Fortunately, the current selection has a few standouts. Franziska Furter’s Squall Lines are impressive, intricate fibrous miniature sculptures installed against clean white walls (the organic forms seem to be created entirely out of crochet knots). Her other, larger, installation of broken glass under carpet was both subtle (you didn’t know at first why the floor creaked and cracked underfoot), participatory (I jumped from side to side as if I had bubble wrap underfoot), and poetic (ahh, the metaphors… the glass ceiling, museums as glass houses…). While most of Raphael Zarka’s work was completely overblown, his sculpture, La Draisine, was both completely absurd (a “vehicle” built from two vintage motorcycles attached to each other, facing opposite directions) and impressive in scale and whimsy. Finally, Serge Spitzer’s huge tubular installation provided a captivating physical metaphor for the movement of information within a network of gates and passageways. The shows are up until early May 2010.

José Maria Sicilia | CECILIA (Constellations)

I wasn’t crazy about the other pieces in the current show at Galerie Chantal Crousel but I liked the simple gestures of Sicilia’s Cecilia sculptures. Flat door sized slabs of marble, leaning against the wall, covered in smooth round “bubbles” that seems to float on the surface of still water. The effect was clean and contemplative; each protrusion existed in communion with the others, but also in it’s own separate world. The only aspect that I found annoying was that the “bubbles” were surrounded by shallow, round, concave pools. The works were made by cutting into a stone of a certain width, and  if the artist has began the work with a thicker stone, which would have allowed some more subtle variations in the depth and size of each “bubble,” as well as its’ relation to the surrounding space…

Bétonsalon: Insolubles Solides

I went to a bunch of openings on the Rue Louise Weiss last Saturday, where I came upon a nice small show of artist books by the environmental artist Richard Long at the Christophe Daviet-Thery gallery. While documentation can be nice, the best show of actual work I saw that night was at Bétonsalon. I liked a small, very poetic print imprisoned in a box made of sandblasted, semi-transparent glass by Aurélian Mole (Noorderlicht, 2008). My favorite piece was Tapis de Poussière (Dust Rug) by Frédéric Pradeau. The artist wove a large grey floor rug out of dust, presumable the kind recuperated from vacuum cleaners. The inversion of the functional object (rug) and what it’s meant to hide (the dust usually swept under the rug) was humorous and asked pointed questions about what kinds of materials we associate with value and invest in. By spending so much time with a material so base (weaving is after all, a meticulous art – travail de moine- par excellence), Pradeau created a form for something that has no form of it’s own. Dust normally callously coats its host sites, with the slow and unwavering determination: here it is collected rather than rinsed away.

Almine Rech Gallery

I liked the “weeping hydrant”, 2008 by Mark Handforth but wasn’t particularly impressed by his other work. On the other hand, the gallery pulled out a painting by Daniel Lergon in the middle of the show to show to some collector and it was great! A flat “painting” that looks like it’s on a sheet of metal, the “canvas” is actually a reflective fabric and with lacquer poured over part of the surface, causing it to subtly reflect oncoming light differently, depending on where the viewer is standing.

Bharti Kher and Glenn Ligon

Liked:

Bharti Kher’s sculpture, “Sing to them what will listen,” 2008. The piece entails a gilded bowl of rice resting atop a stone pillar. The bowl is filled with grains of rice on which the artist has written words (mostly in english)- the effect is entrancing- I was drawn to the precision with which the words are written; the sheer amount of meticulous labour that went into the piece, as well as the way in which the work reversed our habitual ways of valuing various materials- grains of rice that could have blown away in the wind or been consumed without a second thought were suddenly rendered precious. (The other “Bindi works” she’s showing are less exciting) Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin until January 10.

Glenn Ligon’s installation Figure/Paysage/Marine at Yvon Lambert was pretty strong (on the other hand, the other artist showing there now is rather terrible)…

Bertrand Planes at Galerie Griesmar & Tamer

The broom is kind of a one liner but I like the power cords (though I want more of them; a whole room full!) and especially, Life Clock, 2007, a clock that’s been slowed down so that each “hour long” rotation actually takes 84 years. The clock numbers are changed to each represent one year. The show is up until December 20th.

Bétonsalon

Liked:

Loic Raguénès’ white resin sculptures of tree trunks. On view until November 1st at Bétonsalon, 9 esplanade Pierre Vidal-Naquet in the 13th.

Vernissages – October 11th

Liked:

Vincent Olinet, Sans titre (Outils) 2007-2008 (on the other hand, his other piece was much less interesting), at Galerie Laurent Godin

Hermine Bourgadier photos at Schirman & de Beaucé

Mathieu Mercier sculptures across from Galerie Chez Valentin (at least I assume they were M…)

Stéphane Couturier photo at Galerie les Filles du Calvaire

Didn’t Like:

The new 104 arts center opening. The crowd waited for hours to get into newly redone building, which was supposed to be open until 2 am. The gate was bolted at 8 p.m. and locked to visitors despite the fact that people kept exiting the building. Bad planning…