Tracey Emin’s piece, “I Promise to Love You,” lights up the billboards of Times Square. Photo by Ka-Man Tse.
Every night this February, three minutes before the clock strikes midnight, 15 billboards in Times Square will light up with animated messages of love. These glowing Valentines, scrawled in neon colors over a black surface, are the work of British artist Tracey Emin. “I promise to love you,” writes her invisible hand. And then, “I listen to the ocean and all I hear is you.” (more…)
Inside the former Bank of Manhattan in Long Island City for the No Longer Empty exhibition, How Much Do I Owe You?
The theme for No Longer Empty’s exhibition opening on Wednesday is broad and anything but simple. In a way, the title says it all. ‘How Much Do I owe You?’ A straightforward question we use in our everyday lives. Yet, if we delve a bit deeper, it could take on a vast array of different meanings, depending on the social and political context. Each artist featured in No Longer Empty’s upcoming exhibition in the abandoned Bank of Manhattan in Long Island City was asked to create a site-specific work commenting on financial exchange.
Tucked in a little street just off Rue de Turenne in the 3eme arrondissement is the Galerie Karsten Greve, where the mixed media installations and canvases of London-based artist Claire Morgan are currently on exhibit. I’ve been a fan of Morgan’s work for some time now, and out of sheer excitement I found myself at the gates of the gallery way before opening time (the gallery opens at 10am, by the way).
In her second solo show at the Galerie Karsten Greve, Morgan’s work delves into the desperation – through life and death – of our want and need for control of the world around us.
“Nipple”, thistle seeds, bluebottles, nylon, lead, acrylic
In the words of the artist: “My attention has been drawn to the cheap distractions we choose to place in our immediate vicinity, with which to screen us from the overwhelming facts: that we are nothing; that our only certainty as individuals is a life, of unspecified duration, and then death.”
“The Beauty and the Beast” (middle), blue bottles, morpho butterfly, nylon, lead, acrylic
Morgan uses thread, bees, flies, butterflies, seed heads and shreds of plastic for her installations, as well as performing the taxidermy for her pieces herself. “The Colossus”, hanging in the main hall of the gallery, is constructed from over 50,000 torn plastic fragments meticulously threaded to form a huge sphere. A taxidermy mute swan is visible from a gap in the middle, its wing tip peeking out from the top. It evokes a feeling of being overwhelmed, a reminder of something greater than us.
“The Colossus”, torn polythene, a taxidermy mute swan, nylon, lead, acrylic
In “The Heart of Darkness (II)” she uses blue bottle flies strung through nylon to form a cube. The breathtaking “The Birds and the Bees” explores the “betrayal of beauty and all that goes with it” – a pair of taxidermy blackbirds are enclosed in a circle of honey bees, army-like.
“Heart of Darkness (II)”, bluebottles, nylon, lead, acrylic
“The Birds and the Bees”, honey bees, taxidermy blackbirds, plant pigment (saffron), nylon, lead, acrylic
In the final space of the exhibit, isolated in a little room, is “Terminal”. It is a piece that articulates, with torn pieces of white plastic and a taxidermy herring gull, the end of everything : human, action, and velocity.
“Terminal”, torn polythene, taxidermy herring gull (juvenile), nylon, lead, acrylic
Also in the exhibit are Morgan’s painting studies, her canvases smeared with blood and preservatives from the process of taxidermy. These are her two-dimensional studies and sketches, which she calls “blood drawings”.
Whether or not you are interested in installation art, this exhibit will be able to draw out a reaction from you, and will make you question all that you deem important and fleeting.
The way everything intersects but never touches and the cyclical theme of each piece makes Quietus one of the best collections I’ve seen, hands down. If there is one exhibit to see before the year ends, it is this. Through her art, Morgan succeeds at showing us that these flies, bees, blackbirds, swans and torn plastic balanced precariously on nylon string are, surprisingly, very much like ourselves : human, terrifying, and staggeringly beautiful.
Quietus runs from September 8 to Novemer 3, 2012
Galerie Karsten Greve [Map]
5 rue Debelleyme, 75003
Metro: Saint Sebastien-Froissart
Want to discover more about the Marais? Here’s more on its history, places to eat and things to see.
On a recent trip to Bolivia, I was invited to a very special event in La Paz. The Casa de Arte Abierta (Art Open House) is a popular exhibition of underground Bolivian artists’ work, including photography, paintings, drawings, video art, installation art, performance art and live music. For a full twelve hours, visitors can immerse themselves in this world and learn all about the artists’ innovation.
As I learned on a visit to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, the art scene in Bolivia is very difficult to break into. Museums run by the municipality tend to promote an exclusive and elitist vision of what they’d like the Bolivian art scene to be. Artists who challenge the status quo or attempt to stir up controversy need to find other channels in order to get their work out there. The Casa de Arte Abierta provides exactly that. The project is an initiative of Random is Not Whatever, an independent record label in La Paz.
An Open House in the most literal sense of the term, the exhibition takes place in a vacant house on Avenida Muà±oz Reyes, on the south side of the city. Artists’ installations occupy the rooms of the house with thick black curtains framing the doorways so visitors must pass through the curtains to get from room to room. The whole house is dimly lit, creating a somewhat eery atmosphere after the sun has set. The mood is thus set for contemplation of the art. In an almost symbolic sense it seems as though a spotlight is being shined on a dark part of society– artists calling for an examination of the social and political situation in Bolivia.
In one room, for example, video art by various artists shows silent images featuring sex or even the suggestion of self-inflicted violence. The alienation and discontent is palpable. In one striking slow motion video, a young man mechanically humps an androgynous person doggy style while eating a sandwich. In another room with installation art, the scene is set to show a dining table that seems to have been destroyed in a fight, with broken beer bottles and wine (or possibly blood) stains. One room is set up like a shrine or seance, with an ornate gold mirror in the center and candles burning on the floor. In one of the front rooms, the message is overtly political: spray painted onto the wall is the phrase “No a la criminalizacion de la protesta social”. This work was created in response to the arrest of an innocent protestor accused of terrorism by the Bolivian government.
Outside, various musical groups perform on the lawn and guests can buy drinks at a bar on the porch. While I was there, a couple performed a spontaneous dance with some impressive acrobatic moves. And when a small dog made a cameo, barking at the performers, no one knew whether it was rehearsed or spontaneous.
The next Casa de Arte Abierta will be held on September 6, 2012. For more information on the artists involved, check out their website.
Get in touch with the author on Twitter @lauraitzkowitz
French artist Daniel Buren is behind this year’s Monumenta installation, which has been drawing visitors en masse over the last few weeks to the majestic nave of Paris’ Grand Palais.
Already well known to Parisians, Buren’s works are site-specific and his parameters of ‘creating’ are derived from analyses of existing site and context. A fine example of this is Buren’s controversial Les Deux Plateaux, installed in the courtyard of the Palais Royal in 1983. The immense controversy and divided reception over this piece certainly raised Buren’s profile on the world stage. With In Situ, Buren has used the geometry and layout of the Palais’ nave and dome, among other contextual influences, to rationalise the layout of a series of coloured plastic canopies stretched over steel frames.
“Because of its size, its beauty and history, [the Grand Palais] is one of the most difficult places for an exhibition,” Buren said on commencing the Monumenta installation. Despite his apprehensions, In Situ is relatively playful. The frivolous orange, blue, green and yellow tensile plastic canopies are contrasted with the restrained and gridded black and white canopy frames. The canopies are all roughly set at the typical ceiling height of a Parisian apartment, creating an intimate space for visitors as they move through the nave and below the grandeur of its glazed vaulted roofs. The central dome itself has received some blue coloured plastic. Despite the extent and number, the canopies recede within the majesty of the nave.
As the intensity of the sun changes in the Paris sky above, so does the coloured light cast onto the floor below. When the sky dulls, the canopies become reflective, visitors animating the space below canopies with their own movement. Barely audible sounds permeate from the fringes of the nave, and at night roving spotlights turn the installation into something of a disco.
Visitors can pause at the cafe for a psychedelic lunch or refreshment break. The rear mezzanine provides an elevated spot from which the entire extent of the installation can be perceived and all of the coloured canopies are visible. Centrally located mirrored podiums reflect a view of the coloured dome and sky, above.
Last year’s Monumenta Leviathan installation by Anish Kapoor certainly made an impact, and provided subsequent Monumenta artists with a very hard act to follow. Kapoor’s gigantic pneumatic balloon sat proudly within the Grand Palais nave, a truly monumental piece. In Situ certainly respects the grandeur of the space, and is subordinate to the ‘size, beauty and history‘ of the nave.
The installation is a delight to visit, though one can’t help but wonder whether Buren’s parameters for design and creating could have been slightly relaxed, and if the installation might benefit from being more interactive.
Pre-purchasing tickets ahead of time online can save time if you are unable to get there during the week, but get there quickly as In Situ runs until the 21st of June.
As Untapped wrote last year, the Grand Palais plays host to the annual La Nuit Electro, last October’s edition was a stunner headlined by SBTRKT, Modeselektor, Crystal Fighters and Cassius among other electronic music greats. Details of the 2012 edition have not yet been announced, but keep an eye on the SFR La Nuit Electro site.
How to get there:
Avenue Winston-Churchill, 75008 Paris [Map]
Metro: Champs-Elysées Clémenceau or Franklin D Roosevelt
Website: http://www.monumenta.com/en
Get in touch with the author @twarbrick.
Even before you begin to try and understand Leandro Erlich’s sculptures and installations, you already begin to sense that something is different, downright uncanny.
Suited man coming down head first
All Parisians, little and big, want this picture where they pretend to climb up a building, tumble down the gray rooftop and hang off an iron balcony with their feet facing the sky and their head reaching for the ground. This partly explains the success of Argentine artist Leandro Erlich’s re-construction of Bâtiment at Centquatre, as part of its In_Perceptions collective exhibition, in September 2011. Originally created for Paris Nuit Blanche 2004, this monumental and vertiginous installation plays on the effects of a gigantic mirror which gives a truly exhilarating feeling of hanging off a four-story building, while safely lying on the ground.
People on the horizontal building looking at their vertical images.
The constructed building is typical Haussmann architecture with a stone faà§ade and wrought iron balconies that speaks to both Parisians and tourists — a real symbol of Paris. The building is horizontal, and the mirror offers the vertical sensation that invites visitors of all ages to “climb” without any effort and defy the laws of gravity. Children and adults marvel at their suspended mirrored images — and kids have to be constantly reminded to not climb onto the mirror itself. Like Alice in Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking Glass, who wouldn’t want to step through a mirror and enter into a fantasy world where climbing buildings is the norm? What a thrill!
Leandro Erlich has created a fun and interactive experience that is both individual and collective, real and unreal. Bâtiment is reinterpreted with each new visitor and is therefore constantly changing, a true living piece of artwork.
Bâtiment at Centquatre in Paris has been extended through August 4, 2012.
Centquatre Paris [map]
5, rue Curial
75019 Paris
Metro: Riquet
www.104.fr
Follow Untapped Cities on Twitter and Facebook! Get in touch with the author @PWongLemasson.
