Exhibitions
Magasin d'en face
open Monday to Friday, 14:00–18:00
free entrance
Annika Larsson
2 - 25 February 2005
Born in Stockholm in 1972, lives and works in New York.
Her filmed performances are projected, larger than life, in exhibition spaces.
Their subject matter is based on male stereotypes, which she captures in banal
situations such as smoking a cigar (Cigar, 1999) or walking a dog (Dog,
2001). The probing is slow and takes place in minimalist settings to the sound
of electronic music by Tobias Bernstrup. The video New Gravity also
explores aesthetic codes and male behaviour; it shows adolescents being lulled
by electronic music. Annika Larsson films these bodies in close-up, dwelling
on the face and feet, the points of contact that keep them in a social space
that is constantly slipping away from them, even so. We see the 3D image of a
man, facing one of the boys. This unreal figure reveals a world in which the
inconsequential technological image suddenly becomes a dangerous model, one that
the boy tries to follow.
New Gravity, 2003, 29’
courtesy Andrehn-Schiptjenko Gallery, Stockholm
Amy O'Neill
Happy Trails Supersized (from Parade Float Graveyard)
1st - 31 Mach 2005
Born in Beaver, USA, in 1971, lives and works in Geneva and Brooklyn.
“The work of this American artist explores the oddities of her native culture
and of her adoptive home, Switzerland.
Two queen’s crowns, a red rose, and a gold star can be read as symbols
of good fortune. An oversized brown boot strap grouped within this context appears
conspicuously out of place.
These five signs are presented as abandoned fragments, fallen off of parade floats
from the 1960s. They are part of a series of objects titled Parade Float
Graveyard.
Three large-scale pencil drawings on canvas, entitled Rose Queens, Happy
Trails, and Monstro define the context of the fragments. Documentary
images of floats from past Pasadena Rose Bowl Parades were used as source
materials for the rendering of these “memorial drawings.” To memorialise
parade floats aims to highlight their status as very temporary monuments of popular
vernacular culture. The float fragments were made after details taken from the
drawings. The gold star refers to the 5-point gigantic spur which can be seen
in Happy Trails, the drawing depicting a pair of boot/floats sauntering
down the street, while the brown boot strap is imagined as torn from one of the
pair’s surface. The red rose and the queen’s crowns are accessories
found in Rose Queens, a parade float originally designed as a showcase
for beauty pageant contestants.
For the past 113 years, the Rose Bowl Parade has been held on New Year’s
Day in Pasadena, California. The parade’s organizers original intention
was to show off their home’s mild winter weather. As one organizer phrased
it: “Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.” It
is recorded in Pasadena’s Historical Library that another of the organizers
had visited Nice and was inspired by the Battle of the Flowers.
Rose Bowl Parade floats are also remarkable because of their decorative
guise so ridiculously whimsical in contrast to the propaganda they carry. A float
of flowers entered in the 1968 Rose Bowl Parade by the Fraternal order
of Odd Fellas and Rebekahs and titled Hark, Hark, the Ark is described
in the event’s official program as: “A depiction of Noah’s
great adventure to save the animal kingdom from 40 days and 40 nights of rain.” The
ark was originally covered in white chrysanthemums, pink chrysanthemums covered
the roof, and a blaze of red roses covered the deck: An archaic fundamentalist
biblical story dressed up as an oversized cuddly plush toy! Another monumental
float, this time by Kodak, depicting America the Beautiful (1977) portrayed
idyllic scenes of American family life on a rotating band that mimics a film.
Each scene – presented as a photographic frame and devoted to a particular
family value – is made up of organic materials (one was created with onion
seeds). Last and most ironically, Union Oil Company of California once presented,
in 1968, a revolving globe of 8,000 pink roses entitled A World of Adventure…
Amy O’Neill / March 2005
Catherine Sullivan
‘Tis Pity She’s a Fluxus Whore, 2003
1st - 29 April 2005
John Ford, considered by critics as one of the last great
playwrights of the English Renaissance, published ‘Tis Pity She’s
a Whore in
1633. The play tells the dramatically ending story of the relationship between
Giovanni and his sister Annabella. Catherine Sullivan references the play’s
1943 production featuring “Chick” Austin as Giovanni. Sullivan
concentrates precisely on this presentation at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford,
Connecticut where Austin was also director. The contents of the play (incest,
murder) and its presentation’s context (World War II) were considered
scandalous and resulted in Austin being asked to leave the Wadsworth.
The play’s
1943 production is put into contact with a series of performances presented
in 1964 at the auditorium of the Technical School in Aachen (the Audimax Project,
20 July 1964) during a Fluxus Festival which featured Bazon Brock, Ludwig Gosewitz,
Erik Andersen, Arthur Koepcke, Robert Filliou, Wolf Vostell and Joseph Beuys.
This event coincided with the twentieth anniversary of the call to resistance
by the Germans against Hitler. Several of the artists seized the occasion to
evoke this historic date in their work. The event’s
tension reached its climax when Beuys was punched in the face but without interrupting
his action, face bloodied, he continued, brandishing a crucifix in front of
the public. The American artist considers this event as one of the key moments
in avant-garde history and attempts to reconstruct the project in 2003 while
associating it with the theatrical reference along with its main character.
The work ‘Tis Pity She’s a Fluxus Whore is composed of
two videos (filmed on 16mm and transferred to DVD) presented as a diptych.
Filmed in the original presentations’ two locations (Hartford on the
left screen and Aachen on the right), one sole actor incarnates all of the
characters by means of poses and costumes.
The work evolves with each presentation. Photographs or objects having to
do with Fluxus may be added (for example, photograms of objects, Brechts’ chairs,
or photographs taken during the film’s shooting).
At Magasin d’en Face, the videos are shown on monitors with a series of
18 color photographs. The Potential Interlocutor (2003) shows details
of graffiti found on the wooden chairs and writing tablets in the Audimax in
Aachen. For the artist, a potential audience for these new performances is thus
proposed.
Jason Rhoades
2 – 31 May 2005
Born in Newcastle, California, in 1965.
Lives and works in Los Angeles.
“His sculptural installations are profuse, in every sense of the word,
but they are also intuitively and intelligently composed, so that each object
has its place in a larger system. In this theatrical whole, the object becomes
a kind of beacon among the alliance of a living, chromatic whole that embraces
all the elements and every medium.” (Harald Szeemann, L’Autre,
la Biennale de Lyon/RMN, Paris, 1997)
Sound Piece (Duet for Hammond and Hammond), 2000
collection Pierre Huber, Geneva, courtesy Art & Public, Geneva
4 MD players, various MDs, 4 wooden tables with collaged photos under Plexiglas,
4 plastic barrels, one aluminium barrel, one wooden Mephisto shoe box, cables,
aluminium pole, motion detectors, speakers,
rolls of posters, miniature rugs.
The title of the work refers to the exhibition "Perfect World" in Hamburg,
1999: A large polishing machine with the fabricator's name of HAMMOND was used
there to polish the huge amount of aluminium poles necessary for the
construction. In reaction to this, the artist then hired a Hammond organ and
an organ player, who would play Abba songs in duet with the noisy polishing machine.
Parts of this duets are heard on the MDs of 'Sound Piece'.
Approaching the sculpture, the visitor will trigger motion detectors which in
turn activate MD players. The more people are around the work, the more players
will start working and recreate the cacophony of Hamburg 1999, enabling a reconstructed
experience of the atmosphere during the set-up of the 'Perfect World' exhibition.
On the small tables relics and models of this installation are seen, such as
miniature rugs and barrels, photos of the garden, etc.
Rodney Graham
1st - 30 June 2005
Born 1949 in Vancouver, where he lives and works.
Rodney Graham makes videos in which he plays characters who are emblematic of
a period. He builds up a typology of figures. In Vexation Island (1997)
he is a pirate on a desert island. City Self/ Country Self presents
the artist face to face with his double during a comic self-encounter in which
he plays both dandy and bumpkin. In How I Became a Ramblin’ Man,
he does the lone cowboy. A Reverie Interrupted by the Police shows the
artist taking advantage of a moment of freedom to play a melody “in the
style of John Cage” on his piano, before he is taken back by the police.
A Reverie Interrupted by the Police, 2004, 8’
collection Pierre Huber, Geneva, courtesy Art & Public, Geneva
Tracey Emin
1st - 29 July 2005
Born 1963 in London, where she lives and works.
Her works originate in
personal experiences, mainly affairs of the heart and sexual episodes.
Often on the squalid or murky side, they depict a teenager in a small seaside
town, then a young city-dwelling adult in the post-sexual revolution world.
Emin’s work uses different media.
This presentation of small format
works gives an idea of their variety.
A monotype, Sometimes I look at
myself’, 2000, shows a
self-portrait of the artist.
A polaroid, I live and work in London
E1, 2003, allows us to
contemplate the details of her face with a close-up of her mouth and nose.
The artist’s message is extended to the other with her neon, Meet
me in heaven, I will wait for you, 2004.
In the video Sometimes
the dress is worth more money than the money,
2000-2001, the artist orients her ideas toward a reflection on sexuality
and money.
Collectif 1.0.3
1st - 29 July 2005
Anne Couzon Cesca, born in 1978; François Bernus, born in 1974; Arnaud
Bernus, born in 1974. Live and work in Noisy-le-Sec.
Using a name that directly refers to the protocol for naming software versions,
the 1.0.3 group comprises three young artists whose professed aim is to explore
the subjective aspect of reproducibility by elaborating objects that centre on
the use of computers, making constant use of monitors. “For us, the computer
is the place where three different notions come together: conservation, conversion
and conversation.” Their MISMA (Module d'Intervention de Sauvegarde de
Méthodologies Artistiques: Intervention Module for Backing Up Artistic
Methodologies) is conceived as a perceptual tool exploring the role played by
digital technology in event-based or individual artistic production. This resource
centre accumulates and organises computer back-ups (arborescence, file names)
and maps. Arboflash and Planiscope are the two modes employed here.
http://projetmisma.free.fr
Marcel Dzama
19 September - 28 October
Born in 1974 in Winnipeg, Canada, lives and works in New York
Marcel Dzama’s
drawings mix ‘high’ and ‘low’ references, such as the
history of his hometown, films noirs, surrealism, and characters from
mythology. Made using ink and watercolor, often on paper, they are recognizable
because of their brown tones obtained by using root beer extract.
The artist
composes scenes peopled by characters, animals and robots, painted in decors
made up of few elements (a horizon line, a tree, a snow-filled plain). The ensemble
evokes familiar and ambiguous situations without providing a narrative context.
The presentation at Magasin d’en face proposes 8 ink and watercolor
works on paper and two series of 16 and 25 drawings, all made in 2004. A compilation
of 18 videos will also be shown.
Presentation organized in collaboration with Santa Monica Center for
Contemporary Art, Barcelona, curated by Frederic Montornes and Magasin