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FIAC – Paris Body Politics

26 Nov
FIAC, Foire International D’Art Contemporain,
Every October, Paris holds its annual contemporary art fair. This year the locations were divided between Grand Palais and Cour Carree Du Louvre
Aside from the usual, too much abstract art, the provocative compelling works dealt with body politic.


Douglas Gordon, Portrait of You + Me
Black and White photos mounted on mirror, with strategic holes burnt in them.
Douglas Gordon is most reputable for his monumental video installations, like 24 Hour Psycho (slowed down Hitchcock’s film so the duration filled 24 hours) creating film installations renegotiating concept of fluidity, time, and memory.

This photographic work maintains the same ominous Gordon feeling, staying tres film noir. I love the titles, bravo Douglas Gordon.



Thomas Hirschhorn, Every Wound is My Wound Bullet riddled gruesome photo collage montage of pornography, tits and ass in the typically Hirschorn way.


Kendell Geers. We saw 7 Deadly Sins at the Venice Biennale. The walls and Buddah were covered using the same mirrored geometric typography as 7 Deadly Sins, Geers approaches with a more explicit, the word FUCK creating this very linear pattern.

With splatters of black ink, his explosive use of negative space in his paintings of masturbating figures.


Vik Muniz Hollowed glass sculpture with little puddles of blood coloured liquid inside. Haunting, humanizing, extraordinary.

BEST OF GIARDINI

26 Nov

USA
Felix Gonzalez-Torres used 700 lbs of individually wrapped licorice in an analogy to missiles and oil, pariotism and capitolism . His use of these dark multiples, manufactured goods, and strings of lightbulbs, playing with the idea of candy is a sinister melange of sweets and darkness.

Did anyone else see this guy in the Padiglione Italia? He was walking a mechanical dog on a leash…. bon, bref. He also obscured my shot of Sigmar Polke stunning painting…. rather pigment on screens, stitched and laquered. Impossible to photograph, but truely breathtaking!

FINLAND – Maariya Wirkkala, a boat filled with bloodred liquid slowly mechanically rocking upon an ocean of broken colourfull shards of glass.

GERMANY – Isa Genzken titled this space Oil, but I think it was crap. Uninspired and lazy. Astronauts floating in the air, found objects lots of skulls, boring boring.

ENGLAND

Tracy Emin, nice to see her work moving away from trash vulgarity towards a more introspective subversiveness.

Venice Biennale – CANADA

26 Nov

CANADA

Lets be honest, I am Canadian and I love Canada, but the exterior of the pavillion looks like an outhouse!!
David Altmejd creates a hallucinatory architectural environment mixing glass mirrors with natural elements businessman bodies with bird heads all culminating in Giant an anthropomorphic commentary on man nature and our highspeed society.

Russia – Venice Biennale

25 Nov

Last Riot a triptych digital video created by the collective called AES+F (Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky + Evgeny Svyatsky).
Using very basic computer graphics , the montaged segmented videos showing in digitized computer animation, animals birds and reptiles cut by sceens of desert with army jeeps, then vast arctic landscapes of torso-nu children fighting in slow motion with baseball bats and golf clubs. An apocalyptic view of modern society corruption and video games.

Contrastly, Audrey Bartenev Lost Connection spun humour and naivite, in the use of banal technology.

Venezuela – Venice Biennale

25 Nov


Photographer Antonio Briceno exhibition titled Gods of America.

Pensive and heroic, these portraits reconsider our role in the landscape.

Best of African Pavillion – Venice Biennale

25 Nov

Algeria’s Philippe Parreno, an empty room the ceiling filled with black helium filled speach bubble balloons.

Haiti’s Mario Benjamin Sublime emotive portraits.

Kendell Geers 7 Deadly Sins

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

MOUNIR FATMI - Save Manhattan 03

An assemblage of speakers old and new lined up in the middle of the space. The subtility is what gives this work its bulldozing effect, a massive spotlight casts from the speakers a shadow reminiscent of the Manhattan skyline. The voice of the iconic city floods from the speakers, the sounds of cars, streets, parks, a harmony of urbanity.

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