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Palais de Tokyo: Carte Blanche All of the Above

18 Nov

On of my favourite contemporary spaces, the Palais de Tokyo, is undergoing massive renovations, and during this time are hosting selective exhibitions in the atrium and main auditorium.

John M Armleder curated a All Of the Above, by presenting a variety of art works by 20 different artists (including sculptures, videos, and paintings) in an non-traditional manner.  He staged the works on a multilevel platform allowing the viewer only a frontal viewpoint.

This intriguing display method gave me a whole different perspective and challenged the way I typically evaluate and look at art.  Generally by passing video – the small monitors really stood out between the imposing works around them.

Food For Thought

1 Apr

Finally went to the Centre Culturel Suisse, in the heart of the marais, its a space dedicated to art culture and performance with lots of interestings thing happening all the time.

I saw a disaster sculpture show, looks like it was run by toddlers of hardcore folkart enthousiasts!!! horrible horrible scarrrrrry pottery.

I LOVED the banana peel sculpture and the snowman. Naive but it says something about temporality, banal jokes, and banana/carrot/ mmmmmm smoothie!!!

I’m hungry, and I LOVE cake!!!

These are for sale at BlackBox in the Palais de Tokyo…. delicious handknit gateau!!!

Cellar Door Loris Greaud

27 Mar


Cellar Door has two phases, ON and OFF. I had had the unfortunate yet sublime pleasure to experience Cellar Door on OFF.

The entire of the Palais de Tokyo is assumed by the works of Loris Greaud. There is an industrial garage door, you stand in front of the motion sensor, and the door lifts. Combination of sound and light installations, I’m sure its spectacular when ON.

The dark forest felt straight out of Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas. Paintings in the exhibition, OF the works in the exhibition where stuning and echoed the difference the lights have on the works (since many of the pieces have neon bulbs or electrical components).

Third Mind at Palais de Tokyo

4 Mar


The exhibition Third Mind, curated by Ugo Rondinone, is what he considers a “way to harmonize exhibition of various works was to imagine, by a mode of self reflection, the global concept of organic chaos”. Basically means everything and nothing at the same time, giving way to an interesting assortment of artistic endeavours.

With many random abstract sculptures, installation rooms with nothing notable. The works I found the most compelling were the paintings Madonna, and Birch Trees by Joe Brainard, the photos installation CarPark by Sarah Lucas, and the illuminated room by Valentin Carron.
Carron space seemed to me an homage to Jesus, Dan Flavin and Louise Bourgois spiderwebs. Though the crosses look heavy and overbearing they are actually made out of Styrofoam. Genius!!!

Pierre and Gilles double je at Jeu de Paume

21 Jan

The Jeu de Paume is an ideal lunch break gallery, The lightness of the structure and the upbeat exhibitions is always a pleasure to see. Especially, Pierre and Gilles, dynamic duo of French photographers that fit together better than Batman and Robin.

Super Kitch, vibrant colourful, almost plastic quality of their photos. Their use of icons and subjects or celebrities as icons, Pierre and Gilles manage to create an extraordinary body of work on display in this retrospective.

Partners in work and in life, they pair each portrait with a customized frame. Even the staircases in the building were lined with handpainted icons of the portraits featured in the exhibition.

ROMAIN OSI exhibition Uscita at Maison Europeenne de la Photo Paris

6 Dec

Rolling thousands of kilometers during the night, Romain Osi photographs radiate the blur of neon gas station lights and truckstops that makes the hunger for a shotgun midnight roadtrip grow in your stomach and ache in heart.

A narrow room, sides lined with photos radiating a luminous red-orange glow, crowned by a video of the streaming night highway.

The clever part of this show was the viewfinder of our childhood’s past, this little box of darkness with mini-slides of the exhibited photographs that come to life in your hand as you click through them like the images flicker by you in that long dark drive home.

TULSA VS HARLEM Larry Clark in Martine Barrat’s neighbourhood

6 Dec

The Maison Europeenne de la Photographie presents and interesting dialogue between Larry Clark’s sadistic triste portrayl of his kids from his home town Tulsa. An early photographic reportage of the expolitation of sex and drugs by Middle- American youth, which would set the narrative to his later films like Kids.

Where Larry Clark surveys the seedy exploits of white trash Oklahoma, Martine Barrat photographs and dignifies the warmth and the exhuberance of the Black communities in Harlem, New York.

GIACOMETTI at the Centre Pompidou Paris

6 Dec

A beautiful retrospective of Giacommetti’s oeuvre at The Centre Pompidou in Paris. My favorite of his works are his drawings which I find expressive and thoughtfilled. Seemingly raw and gestural, Giacommetti’s drawings are a brilliant prelude towards his sculptures.



My true secret pleasure was this notebook of preliminary drawings and jotted ideas.

DANIEL RICHTER German New Expressionist painters

6 Dec

On my recent trip to Berlin I stopped by the Vonderbank Gallery, saw a painting exhibition by Christian Awe. The works were strongly reminicent of Daniel Richter.

These Daniel Richter paintings are part of the permanent collection at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. I love Richter’s paintings. The first large scale exhibition I saw of his work was Pink Flag White Horse at Toronto’s PowerPlant. It was immediatly enamoured by the intensity of contrast between the grafitti like technique of fluorecent colours with their spraypaint like quality raditing out from the dark backgrounds. He creates such propulsive movement and with his use of layering and colours.

While Richter’s works often have a subliminal commentary on police and authority, we can read the narative of this Berlin based artist.

Walid Raad

24 Nov

I Only Wish I Could Weep

In our society of CCTV, we don’t notice all the cameras noticing us. The video montage of sunsets in I Only Wish I Could Weep inspires a sensitivity remarkably simple but so warming and profound.

The montage is peiced together by feed from a security camera set to monitor the boardwalk along the coast in Beyrouth. Each day at sunset the unnamed security guard would divert away from surveillance….. panning across the still waves, focusing upon the horizon, and record the sun slowly melt into the water.

Broadening from Beyrouth to middle east politics, streaming down to societal in-security and surveillance, down to the individual minutes which wind down the end of one’s long tedious work day, a silent hommage to the sunset. As the time counter clicks the minutes past, this video is a pure moment of reflection and tranquillity.

Jennifer Allora + Guillermo Calzadilla

24 Nov

Returning a Sound

The first time I saw this video installation was during a show at the Maison Rouge, called Un Vision Du Monde.

Approaching the doorway to the Allora + Calzadilla niche, a quiet rummbling murmur grew stronger and stronger…. The video projected on a small screen contrasted by the big noise that filled the little space.

On the screen rolling green hills cut by narrow dirt roads. We follow behind a young boy on a scooter, the mouth of a trumpet comically welded to the exhaust pipe.

He speeds through the warm landscape with an improvised soundtrack honked out by the switching gears and the velocity of his journey. The work is a comment on the American military base occupation in an area of Porto Rico.

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