Friday, October 28, 2011

I LOVE NAVID NUUR














Before posting on the fair, I just want to stop a second on one of my biggest crush this year : Navid Nuur. I had the chance to see some of his pieces at the Venice Biennale >here< and he was represented by two galeries at the fair + one work Hors Les Murs. 
Born in Iran, Nuur is a 35 years old contemporary and post-minimalist artist that works on the relation between time & nature strenghts. A very fashionable topic to work on if we just take a look at the work of Cyprien Gaillard and his quest for human traces except that Nuur put elements of his own creation over thousands years of erosion. By doing this he questions the time chronology and the connection between objects, stories and words while Gaillard just list it and put it under glass.
Words, narrations and the way he plays with it are to me, the strongest points of his artwork. I usually don't have crushes on sculptor but he is so much more and even ask to talk about neologism intermodules (love the concept) and not sculptures. 
By building collection of all kinds, for example bubble, airbags, chewing-gum he reminds me of Gilbert & George archives. The Secret Files of Gilbert & George is an hilarious 35 minutes film by Hans Ulrich Obrist in which the two artists reveal and comment on the contents of their work archives with a lot self-mockery. Through the document, the couple show his method of classifying their thoughts, their material (chewing-gum on the ground, hair in the bath, clippings...), which is the very formation of a philosophy of art and life.
Even if they have totally different practices, their attempts to discover the contemporary analogies of the modern world are very close. 


Alien.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Intergalactic

I had no time to do the Frieze and only could do a solo exhibition of the latest work of Pistoletto at the Simon Lee Gallery. I loved these new formats, and the theme of Lavoro he's working on. I won't post on it now but I'm thinking of going back through the major pieces of his career later. I do not feel very guilty because most of the galleries represented at the Frieze were also presented at the FIAC in Paris and I've spent the last three days organising archaeological digs in the Grand Palais :) .

So this weekend was all about accompanying my designer's friends Olivia (The Nomadic Files) and Sacha (Soyons-Ouf) to their meeting and going to non-ending warehouse parties. My kodak can tell much about it.


A pin-up on the first plan.
Glitter ALL OVER.
The Intergalactic Beauties.
David Guetta got lost in a warehouse party.
A vodka-lemon star (supposed to be) Chez Jeannette in Paris.

Piu Piu & Julie, Baron.
And a here is a bonus given by my friend Olivia. She made this vid in an after party and on the balcony of the place we were staying in. I totally love it.

Friday, October 14, 2011

London Frieze

I'm off to London and it brings so much joy to my heart. I'll visit the Frieze Art Fair and will post on it. October is the best time of the year for art collectors, next week Le Grand Palais will held the F.I.A.C and my wonderful press attache friend Armelle got me a pass. I can't wait to do this marathon !

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Illuminations - Biennale di Venezia 2011

The 2011 Venice Biennale International Art exhibition is the Biennale of light and even the Enlightement. Illuminations (Illuminazioni), a title dedicated to the poet Arthur Rimbaud, defines how you left Venice : illuminated.
89 countries were participating this year with the newly entrants : The principality of Andorra, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and Haïti.
I, of course, will not be able to post on everyting but I'll try to point my biggest crushes.

Maurizio Cattelan Turisti
Maurizio Cattelan in his first visit to the central pavillon said "it is a shamble filled with pigeons". The first creative thought of his piece "Turisti" in which he placed stuffed pigeons all over the pavillon. Like his horse displayed at Punta Della Dogana really questioned the viewers : is it real or is it Piazza San Marco pigeons (their temple) migration to Giardini ?

Urs Fischer Untitled
I award the best artwork to Urs Fischer. A 3 meters wax statue and an all installation are turning into a life-size candles and consuming itself slowly. As most of Fischer's work it's a kind of psychic transformation or collapse. Many chances that this piece will remain for the time of the exhibition. "No wax should be cleaned up" ordered Fischer, celebrating the happy accidents inherants to the artistic process.

Das Institut, Kerstin Brätsh and Adèle Röder
Das Institut is a fictive import/export agency and explores the ubiquitous nature of the commoditized artwork, its independence within a system of replications.

Amalia Pica
Nicholas Hlobo Limundulu Vampire
Nicholas Holbo examines the South African myth limundulu vampire bird described by Xhoza folk song.

Haroon Mirza The National Apavillion of Here and Now
Haroon Mirza built a triangle structure where viewers enter in a dark and small room with a hoop light abover their head getting more and more luminous while the sound strident, shrill and metallic sharpen the keen shapes of the wall. Electricity in both is physical and aesthetic form is taken as occurences in light, sound and movement.

Cyprien Gaillard Floods of the old and the new world
The 2010 price Marcel Duchamp winner has a preoccupation with talisman of a recent past and the historical energies inflated by the destruction of building and monument. The artwork presented at the biennale is a collection of tourist postcard covered with keen bottle labels. The pleasure-charged content of the images circumvents their political darkness, with and ironic take on the sleazi multiculturalism and cultural defilement of hedonistic globalism.

Norma Jeane Who's afraid of free expression
At the beginning of the biennale, a plasticine cube presentend the colors of the Egyptian flag in three horizontal strata. An aesthetical severity contrasting with the pliable, childish material, it is made for. Viewers could touch, shape and paint that inclusive artwork.

Nathaniel Mellors Hippy Dialectics
Mai-Thu Perret Flow my Tears II
A collection of fictional wrtiting build an imagined commune populated entirely by women. An utopian idyll and a great way to consider a non-patriarchal society.

Cindy Sherman Untitled
A series printed on Phototex adhesive fabric scaled to the dimensions of the walls on which the photograph are shown in the manner of 18th century toile de Jay Fabric. She wears no make up for once and suggest the kitsch of religions figurines staring at their viewers.

Monika Sosnowska Antechamber
An architectural art work challenging the perception of what is rational or even possible. It is custom-made and designed to have the feeling to have taken the wrong way.

Song Dong the para-pavillon Ensclosure movement
Song Dong had the privilege - with Franz West and three other artists - to buid one of the 4 para-pavillons of the Biennale. To welcom artworks of Cyprien Gaillard, and Yto Barada, he created a structure of 100 wardrobe doors suggesting a reversal of interior and exterior while referring to the Chinese habit of placin old wardrobe in the streets for extra strorage. He drew a parallel beteen the nieghborhoods of old Beijing and the community of La Biennale.

Navid Nuur Hivewise
Made of pipes, electric wires / neon tubes. A testimony of a spectacular transformation.

Angel Vergara Feuilleton
Representing the belgian Pavillon, Angel Vergara shows a combination of media images and paintings upon it questionning the western iconography, its never ending story. An phantom reality that reminded me the left hands of actresses, an artwork by Pierre Bismuth.

Hajnal Nemeth Crash - Passive Interview
The Hungarian pavillon presented the wor of Hajnal Nemeth. A complex installation of multiple components : theatrical, philosophical and realistic. Walls are understood as accoustic units with various layers of sound meanings, lyrics and voices. An experimental opera, a car crash and the sonic backdrop form the notes of a narrative score.

Shadia & Raja Alem The Black Arch
For the first time since more than a century of art celebration, Venice welcomes Saudi Arabia. The new pavillon show the work of two sisters exploring the meeting point of 2 visions and 2 cities. A monumental absence of color over a big black stone displaying a mirror image said to reflect the present. To me, it looked like a giant oyster displaying black gold and I'll keep that in mind. For a censored and sexist country such as Saudi Arabia I found that sculpture really sexual and the black stone illustrative of how it has become one of the richest country of the world.

Oksana Mas Post-VS-Proto Renaissance
Her workd shows one of the popular ukrainian custom of the kraskenki wooden eggs covered with decoration. For this daunting task Oksana Mas asked female prisoners over 42 different countries. The resut is extraordinary: giant religious icons appear accross thousands of delicately painted eggs.

The American Pavillon Gloria
A lot of auto-critic for the american Pavillon. Olympic athletes training themselves along the most fragile material of their country: planes and tanks. I really liked the work with the real cash machine embedded in an organ referring probably to the money-making churches of the United States.

Singapore Pavillon The Cloud of Unknowing


Christian Boltanski ChanceAnd other random images :