Art. Paris. Day Two
A different day altogether. The sun was shining. The sky was clear. Paris in the sun is a different city, all clarity and light. Walking down Boulevard Raspail, after a day of seeing really good art, the trees, winterized and bare of leaves create the empty spaces that were missing yesterday.
What a great day to end the trip. What was missing in the art yesterday was here today. The provocations, the engagement of the viewer, the architectures of storytelling, the political and the mundane, but all wrapped in opening up the senses to what is new and what is possible.
Cinq Milliards D'Annees - Various Artists; Palais de Tokyo
Five Billion Years is the first chapter of a year long program that is designed not as a singular event - a fixed point isolated in time and space - but the notion of a program, an ongoing experience that is constantly in motion and will feature over the year exhibitions, performances, concerts and conferences. It is committed to artists working today by embodying the uncontainable and elastic nature of contemporary art.
There were numerous artists and works in this exhibition and the contrast with yesterday's disappointing contemporary piece - The Magellanic Cloud - was stark. Everything that was not, this was. It was art as engagement, as schizophrenic as the world today. It was alive and dynamic, sometimes confounding, but never dull.
There were great provocations and some mysterious pieces (like the projected circle of light that cast no shadow when you walked into it - my friend Norm Schwab, who is a lighting designer would have loved it).
It brought into question things like the role of the viewer, patience within viewing art (there was one piece that was a single light bulb in a box that was randomly programmed to only illuminate once a year - today was not that day).
What was great that there was also one piece of Marcel Duchamp's - RotoReliefs from 1953). Duchamp was the ultimate provocateur, having bought a men's urinal and called it Fountain and attempted to display it at a show that had advertised that it would display and piece of art. He did it to find out if the jury would be true to their word and truly display anything. They rejected it, this calling into question their own credibility on what constitutes art.
Other provocative and interesting pieces:
Big Crunch Clock - Gianni Motti; 5 billion year countdown to when the sun will explode
Patman 2, 2006 - Michel Blazy; made with 200kg of soya noodles
Glassworks II, 2006 - Kris Vieeschouwer; From time to time a bottle falls
Revolution, 2005 - Kristof Kintera; The figure violently hits his head on the wall in front of him
There were more, but I'll stop there. Suffice to say that this show will be worth going back to if I am in Paris again this year.
Gary Hill - Fondation Cartier
Gary Hill, who is primarily a video artist had two pieces in this show. One was a video and installation and the other was not a video based piece, though it did involve viewing through a screen.
Frustrum was the video piece. A large tank of petroleum grade crude oil sits in front of a large screen on which is projected an electrical power line tower and electrical lines coming off both sides of it towards the viewer. In the middle of the tower is a large (almost as large as the tower) image on an eagle with a giant wing span. The eagle flaps its wings, hitting the power lines at various times and angles which ignites slapping sounds like thunderbolts. Occasionally the force of the lines snapping creates ripples in the oil.
It's a compelling interrogation of ideas on the power of language, perception and interpretation and could also be a commentary on how stuck the US is in their attempts to wriggle out of the power vacuum they've created in Iraq, and the role that oil plays in the geopolitical schema of the world today.
The second Hill piece was called Guilt. A series of telescopes were set up in the space, all pointed at pedestals across the room from them. On each pedestal was a single gold coin, positioned on edge and rotating. On each coin were different Latin phrases. One looked into the telescope to view the gold piece and also could hear a very isolated voice coming from the telescope. The voice may or may not have been commenting on the gold piece you were viewing. The voice was interrupted in nature - words were muffled or dropped altogether in the script, and seemed to be complaining about some circumstance or just haranguing the viewer.
I couldn't make out all the phrases, but one of them translated to A STONE'S THROW AWAY FROM A WHIRLPOOL OF ERRORS. Another was IN WONDER WE WONDER.
Again, Hill seemed to be commenting somewhat on the political situation in the world, the nature of viewing art (is it a guilty pleasure in a world racked with violence?), our relationships to money and power and the overall value of art.
Both pieces are from 2006 - again, provocative, somewhat confounding and definitely capable of making you think. The one thing that was a little hard on the senses was the smell of the oil, which permeated the entire museum, infiltrating into the other exhibit. Perhaps intentional and a reminder of the overwhelming power that oil has on the world today.
Tabaimo - Fondation Cartier
Tabaimo (not her real name, which is Ayako Tabata) is a young Japanese video artist and animator. This show might have been the highlight of the day. The use of animation and video together and the screen surfaces that were used created really compelling imagery and art.
There were 4 pieces in the show - Japanese Commuter Train, Haunted House, midnight sea, and a series of 4 screens that were an installation showing 4 separate, but somewhat related videos, entitled - Japanese Zebra Crossing, Dream Diary Japan, Japanese Bathhouse - Gents, and Ginyo-ru (guignoller).
Japanese Commuter Train was the most interesting one for me (though they were all fascinating in their own way). You stood in the middle of what seemed like a commuter train, surrounded on both sides by screens. The images made you feel like you were standing in the car and could see out the windows and saw the city moving by.
All of these pieces are a little hard to describe, so I encourage you to seek out this artist and discover her work for yourself.
All in all, a very good day.
Score for the day:
Ideas - Aplenty
Air - Clear and light
Art - As it should be
Oh, and brunch at Carrette, which has some of the best croissants in Paris. Doesn't get any better than that.
What a great day to end the trip. What was missing in the art yesterday was here today. The provocations, the engagement of the viewer, the architectures of storytelling, the political and the mundane, but all wrapped in opening up the senses to what is new and what is possible.
Cinq Milliards D'Annees - Various Artists; Palais de Tokyo
Five Billion Years is the first chapter of a year long program that is designed not as a singular event - a fixed point isolated in time and space - but the notion of a program, an ongoing experience that is constantly in motion and will feature over the year exhibitions, performances, concerts and conferences. It is committed to artists working today by embodying the uncontainable and elastic nature of contemporary art.
There were numerous artists and works in this exhibition and the contrast with yesterday's disappointing contemporary piece - The Magellanic Cloud - was stark. Everything that was not, this was. It was art as engagement, as schizophrenic as the world today. It was alive and dynamic, sometimes confounding, but never dull.
There were great provocations and some mysterious pieces (like the projected circle of light that cast no shadow when you walked into it - my friend Norm Schwab, who is a lighting designer would have loved it).
It brought into question things like the role of the viewer, patience within viewing art (there was one piece that was a single light bulb in a box that was randomly programmed to only illuminate once a year - today was not that day).
What was great that there was also one piece of Marcel Duchamp's - RotoReliefs from 1953). Duchamp was the ultimate provocateur, having bought a men's urinal and called it Fountain and attempted to display it at a show that had advertised that it would display and piece of art. He did it to find out if the jury would be true to their word and truly display anything. They rejected it, this calling into question their own credibility on what constitutes art.
Other provocative and interesting pieces:
Big Crunch Clock - Gianni Motti; 5 billion year countdown to when the sun will explode
Patman 2, 2006 - Michel Blazy; made with 200kg of soya noodles
Glassworks II, 2006 - Kris Vieeschouwer; From time to time a bottle falls
Revolution, 2005 - Kristof Kintera; The figure violently hits his head on the wall in front of him
There were more, but I'll stop there. Suffice to say that this show will be worth going back to if I am in Paris again this year.
Gary Hill - Fondation Cartier
Gary Hill, who is primarily a video artist had two pieces in this show. One was a video and installation and the other was not a video based piece, though it did involve viewing through a screen.
Frustrum was the video piece. A large tank of petroleum grade crude oil sits in front of a large screen on which is projected an electrical power line tower and electrical lines coming off both sides of it towards the viewer. In the middle of the tower is a large (almost as large as the tower) image on an eagle with a giant wing span. The eagle flaps its wings, hitting the power lines at various times and angles which ignites slapping sounds like thunderbolts. Occasionally the force of the lines snapping creates ripples in the oil.
It's a compelling interrogation of ideas on the power of language, perception and interpretation and could also be a commentary on how stuck the US is in their attempts to wriggle out of the power vacuum they've created in Iraq, and the role that oil plays in the geopolitical schema of the world today.
The second Hill piece was called Guilt. A series of telescopes were set up in the space, all pointed at pedestals across the room from them. On each pedestal was a single gold coin, positioned on edge and rotating. On each coin were different Latin phrases. One looked into the telescope to view the gold piece and also could hear a very isolated voice coming from the telescope. The voice may or may not have been commenting on the gold piece you were viewing. The voice was interrupted in nature - words were muffled or dropped altogether in the script, and seemed to be complaining about some circumstance or just haranguing the viewer.
I couldn't make out all the phrases, but one of them translated to A STONE'S THROW AWAY FROM A WHIRLPOOL OF ERRORS. Another was IN WONDER WE WONDER.
Again, Hill seemed to be commenting somewhat on the political situation in the world, the nature of viewing art (is it a guilty pleasure in a world racked with violence?), our relationships to money and power and the overall value of art.
Both pieces are from 2006 - again, provocative, somewhat confounding and definitely capable of making you think. The one thing that was a little hard on the senses was the smell of the oil, which permeated the entire museum, infiltrating into the other exhibit. Perhaps intentional and a reminder of the overwhelming power that oil has on the world today.
Tabaimo - Fondation Cartier
Tabaimo (not her real name, which is Ayako Tabata) is a young Japanese video artist and animator. This show might have been the highlight of the day. The use of animation and video together and the screen surfaces that were used created really compelling imagery and art.
There were 4 pieces in the show - Japanese Commuter Train, Haunted House, midnight sea, and a series of 4 screens that were an installation showing 4 separate, but somewhat related videos, entitled - Japanese Zebra Crossing, Dream Diary Japan, Japanese Bathhouse - Gents, and Ginyo-ru (guignoller).
Japanese Commuter Train was the most interesting one for me (though they were all fascinating in their own way). You stood in the middle of what seemed like a commuter train, surrounded on both sides by screens. The images made you feel like you were standing in the car and could see out the windows and saw the city moving by.
All of these pieces are a little hard to describe, so I encourage you to seek out this artist and discover her work for yourself.
All in all, a very good day.
Score for the day:
Ideas - Aplenty
Air - Clear and light
Art - As it should be
Oh, and brunch at Carrette, which has some of the best croissants in Paris. Doesn't get any better than that.
posted by Paul Salinger at 12:55 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for this. Nice to hear about new art and new ideas.
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