Couture: Maison Martin Margiela

Maison Martin Margiela Couture, Autumn Winter 2011 – 2012, 2011

From the Archive

N° 5 Culture Chanel, Palais De Tokyo, Paris

7 May 2013

From May 5th until June 5th, 2013 Palais de Tokyo in Paris will house the N° 5 Culture Chanel exhibition as part of its Guest Program.

This exhibition has once again been entrusted to Jean-Louis Froment, the curator of the previous editions of Culture Chanel, held successively in Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum for Fine Arts, in Beijing at the National Art Museum of China and more recently in the Opera House in Canton.

Made up of subtle plays of correspondences, N° 5 Culture Chanel cracks the N° 5 code to reveal the links which connected it to specific moments in time and to the avant-garde movements it spanned.

The works of art, photographs, archives and objects exhibited provide an account of the many inspirations which fed the imagination and world of Mademoiselle Chanel. They echo her inner thoughts and shed light on this unique and timeless perfume; whether through her favorite destinations like Venice, Russia or her villa, La Pausa or through the creations of her artist, poet and musician friends Cocteau, Picasso, Apollinaire, Stravinsky, Picabia. Focusing on the long lasting attachments between Chanel and the arts, N° 5 Culture Chanel seeks to reveal the timeless and iconic artistic essence of the N° 5 perfume.

“N°5 is a perfume that travels afar. It crosses countries, gardens, books, poems and artistic movements, where it’s taken as a source for the modernity of its composition. It’s a perfume born of a love story, which its base note very subtly evokes at precisely the same instant time grasps it and carries it to us; so close and never fugitive, revealing even our most secret failings. Indefinable, the words that speak of it are abstract and the images which accompany it superposed on the thick layer of an artistic memory without time. The cultural effect which accompanies N°5 and the unique aura that encircles it, bring continuity to this perfume and enable it to span all periods with knowing assurance. And this journey has no end; it continues to merge and mix with an irreversible movement onward through time. Like a work of art which is renewed with each visitor’s gaze at every exhibition, N°5 recomposes its history with each encounter and time it traverses. Sustained by a set of references attached to the adventures of Modernity’s artistic forms and with Gabrielle Chanel’s very singular and romantic story as a backdrop, the N°5 perfume has gained the status of creation”. Jean-Louis Froment, Curator of the exhibition.

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Exhibition: Bjarne Melgaard, A House to Die In, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

21 September 2012

Magazine Contemporary Culture

Exhibitions Main No Comments

Bjarne Melgaard, From the Exhibition, A House to Die In, 2012

A House to Die In, 25 September – 18 November, 2012
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

A House to Die In is New York based Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard’s first solo exhibition in the UK. The Lower and Upper Galleries feature two of his collaborative projects, which investigate the dynamics of creative and collaborative relationships.

The architectural facade in the Lower Gallery realises a key stage in Melgaard’s ongoing collaboration with award-winning architectural firm Snøhetta, who have exchanged architectural drawings, models and documents with the artist since 2011 as they work closely towards the construction of a purpose-built house where Melgaard will live and work. In the exhibition, Melgaard and Snøhetta present a 1:1 facade of the building’s exterior, alongside a wider body of shared research that demonstrates the positive struggle experienced by both parties as they continually challenge the conventions of their respective practices.

The Upper Galleries house an installation of paintings and sculptures that imagine the interior spaces of Melgaard’s proposed residence, alongside bespoke furniture and ephemera from the artist’s studio. Melgaard created the paintings and sculptures in partnership with a group of artists who have no formal art education and little or no connection to the art world (several of whom are in recovery, face mental or emotional challenges, or suffer from schizophrenia). In these works, their layered conversations are made visible as the artists respond to and expand upon his visual lexicon.

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Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin

6 April 2015

Magazine Contemporary Culture

Culture Galleries No Comments

Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin, established in 2008, is dedicated to developing a cross-disciplinary, trans-generational gallery programme with off-site projects, in collaboration with artists, filmmakers, critics, art historians, and curators. Its international exhibition programme reflects a variety of opinions and practices as well as Leighton’s associations with American and British experimental cinema, artist’s film and video, performance, minimal and conceptual art.

Solo exhibitions by established and emerging artists intersperse with conceptually-motivated group exhibitions and projects. The gallery engages in the re-examination of historical frameworks and practices, in order to bring marginalized figures, objects, events and contexts back into focus. Gallery exhibitions and events have presented and restaged historical works by artists, filmmakers, and designers such as unsung hero of British avant-garde cinema John Smith, Chinese-American painter David Diao, British conceptual artist Bruce McLean, and Italian master designer Enzo Mari. Leighton also produces and exhibits new and recent work by artists from North America, Austria, Britain, China, Colombia, Czech-Republic, Germany, Palestine, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Uruguay – including Ayreen Anastas, Pavel Büchler, Alejandro Cesarco, Aleksandra Domanovic, Rene Gabri, Sharon Hayes, Sanya Kantarovsky, Oliver Laric, Dan Rees, Lucas Ospina, amongst others.

A series of events at the gallery and at off-site locations have included performances by Norwegian musicians Nils Bech and Bendik Giske, Bulgarian artist Voin de Voin, British artist Ian White, and American artist David Levine. A special Artists Edition Series offers exclusive artists editions coinciding with the exhibitions and events. The first of the series includes new editions by: Matthew Buckingham, Douglas Gordon, Sharon Hayes, Anthony McCall, Martha Rosler, and John Smith.

http://www.tanyaleighton.com/main.php#exhibitions

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Talia Chetrit, I Wanted to Expose the Vulnerability in the Private Moments Between Takes

8 February 2017

Magazine Contemporary Culture

Art Artists Main Photography No Comments

Talia Chetrit, Heat, 2015, Parents/Trees, 2014 and Jeans, 2016

Talia Chetrit’s work focuses on the human body—often her own—as a starting point to examine how images are constructed to support different agendas and interpretations of reality. After beginning her practice with an exploration of the manipulative nature of photography, Chetrit is increasingly interested in the relationship the camera has with the subject matter it documents.

“I’m Selecting”, Talia Chetrit’s second exhibition at Sies and Hoke, comprises two discrete bodies of work. One consists of 13 images shot on the streets of New York and Paris. The other, made using a mirror, is a suite of four photographs which depict the artist in her studio, nude from the waist down. Tightly cropped and grainy, semi-anonymized images of businessmen crossing the street and groups of people buying museum tickets typify the impersonal. While, contrastingly, the artist stares back at her viewer in bottomless, startling self-portraits.

The seeming incongruity between these two series is bridged by the amount of control exercised over both. Chetrit’s focus has long been aimed at the ways in which images are constructed and the manner in which they function in society: their contrivances, their agendas, and their fictions. Often the body serves as a site for this exploration of photography’s tenets, and in I’m Selecting, Chetrit uses the bodies of others as well as her own. These images are a reminder of the degree of self-scrutiny we impose on ourselves when we know our pictures are being taken, and the feeling of panic inspired by being photographed without realizing it.

“After reviewing images I had taken of my parents 20 years ago as a teenager, I returned home again to photograph them. As I was shooting, I discovered a dynamic between them that was unknown to me. The presence of the camera and the resulting power shift created an artificial atmosphere that revealed an uneasy interaction between them and a window into their relationship. Curious to find a way to capture this dynamic I began, unbeknownst to them, to videotape our numerous photo sessions over the following year. I wanted to expose the vulnerability in the private moments I had witnessed between takes — moments that the photographs had failed to represent. Parents is a sequence of clips which attempts to capture this staged reality.” Talia Chetrit, 2015

Talia Chetrit was born in Washington, DC in 1982 and lives in New York. Her recent solo exhibitions include Model, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan (2014); Leslie Fritz, New York (2013); Bodies in Trouble, Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf (2012); Ringer, Michael Benevento, Los Angeles (2011); Marking, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan (2011), Renwick, New York (2011). Recent group shows include, amongst others: MORNING AND EVENING ASYLUM, Tanya Leighton, Berlin & Off Vendome, Düsseldorf (2014); The Black Moon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013); A Disagreeable Object, Sculpture Center, New York (2012); Figure and Form in Contemporary Photography, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2012); Second Nature, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA (2012); The Extension, Vilma Gold, London (2011); and The Reach of Realism, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2009).

Text: Patrick Armstrong, http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2015/06/talia-chetrit-at-sies-hoke/ and The Aimia AGO Photography Prize https://www.aimiaagophotographyprize.com/artists/talia-chetrit.
All images belongs to the respective artist and management.

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Sculpture: John Kleckner and Patrick Tuttofuoco, Those Ghosts, 2011

12 December 2011

Magazine Contemporary Culture

Art Artists Main No Comments

John Kleckner and Patrick Tuttofuoco, Those Ghosts, 2011

The works in this exhibition are about human figures dissipating into voids, into abstractions, and shape-shifting into solid structures. Transformation, transcendence, and transience are the core concepts fixed into 2- and 3-dimensional material permanence in each of the exhibited artworks.

In his newest works one can see John Kleckner transitioning from meticulously rendered rotting noses and metamorphosing cavemen, to poetic allusions/illusions of infinite (contemplative) space. Figures do still appear and certainly inform the works on view, but with this new direction and some new techniques, Kleckner has opened his practice to fully embrace abstraction. These works of ink on paper are a meditative union of carefully planned accidents and haphazard intentions.

Patrick Tuttofuoco’s practice initiates a dialogue between individuals and their environment, exploring notions of community and social integration. Tuttofuoco’s sculptures study this concept, relating it to solitary individuals and their ability to transform external reality. Tuttofuoco melds Modernism and Pop; he presses figuration into abstraction, using man as the paradigm of existence, as the matrix and measuring unit of reality. From this interpretative and cognitive process, infinite versions of man and the context of his existence are produced, from which shapes able to animate the sculptures are generated.

John Kleckner’s (b.1978) work is included the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY (The Judith Rothschild Collection of Contemporary Drawings); The Saatchi Gallery, London; Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden; and The Deste Foundation Athens, Greece.
Patrick Tuttofuoco (b. 1974) has exhibited in: 10th Biennial of Havana, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; 50th Venice Biennale; Magasine, Grenoble; Manifesta 5; MAXXI, Rome; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo,Turin.

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