I still believe in miracles II

Dessins sans papier* has revealed a renewed interest in drawing of artists on both the national and the international scene, presenting wall drawings and animated films. Derrière l’horizon gives prominence to yet another major trend characterised by its longing for another dimension, and its desire to bring out the marvellous and the bizarre concealed in the very heart of reality.

Some of the artists test our sensorial and cognitive perception sometimes playing with uncertainty and imperfection. The reality comes out distorted, blurred, even violated. The ellipsis, the transience, the indiscernible become the vectors of displacement poetics. Casting doubt on our ability to recognize brings us out to the frontiers of parallel worlds.

The works selected for Derrière l’horizon cut across a variety of art mediums such as drawing, photography, performance, installation, and video.

Bidding us welcome to the exhibition, Davide Balula places at our disposal a ready-made washbasin of the type used in nuclear power stations. Rinse your eyes behind, a decontamination airlock, prepares us to enter into a new dimension. A little further, the artist presents Un air de fête which shows a balloon attached to the arm of a record-player, and prompts a deceptive Duchamp-style reading of the object. Trisha Donnelly plays with deferred and hidden apparitions. Defying the exhibit’s rules and time codes, she intervenes in invisible places, and at inaudible moments (stepping in on the opening evening, playing a soundtrack after closing). She introduces an evanescent work entitled The passenger, an evoluting series of drawings for eleven days. The Magics lanterns of Adam Putnam, sets of flickering lights, generate spaces haunted by the void, and evoke ancestral rituals and magic.

In weightless conditions, in a space unbounded and radically transformed, Tomas Saraceno introduces us into an architectural utopia of a new sort. In Lighter than air architecture and art, a polygonal structure in levitation, he uses new materials, and suggests the existence of a feasible ecology (in the tradition of Buckminster Fuller and Yona Friedman). In a series of four successive photographs Jean Louis Elzéard captures the menacing and unstable temperament of the sky. His work makes us lose ground and it succeeds in displaying the insurmountable antagonism between the earth and the skies.

A new reality bursts up unexpectedly as the artists transmute the protocols of the exploration process: obsessively, the duo Laurent Tixador & Abraham Poincheval pushes back the boundaries of art in Plus loin derrière l’horizon. The two artists make it a rule to survive in extreme living conditions, going on odd, and at times absurd expeditions (from the city of Caen to the city of Metz, to the Frioul island, to the North Pole). These journeys are documented by films and “trophies”. They abide for the time of the exhibition by a sedentary way of life in the Périgord region, and invite the public to drop in.

Ancient and modern mythology in its multiple formats – narrations, films, television series – is the element many artists draw on when they deconstruct the clichés of the supernatural, of the inexplicable, even of horror.

Markus Schinwald’s Children’s crusade is inspired by the 13th century Jerusalem Children crusade and the Germanic legend of Hamelin, the flautist. He takes up the scene in which the children, hypnotised, follow an articulated marionette, symbol of their alienation, intermingling dissimilar epochs and leaving a narrative pending.

The world of storytelling turns into an extremely contemporary aesthetic in Cao Fei’s films. The artist has been inspired by experimental cinema, Hong Kong cinema, advertising, and video games. Her most recent production, Cosplayers, shows disguised superheroes mangas in a changing urban environment.

The imaginary can lead into dark inner worlds, to the boundaries of irrationality and madness.

Angelika Markul’s films feature animals placed in abnormal and cathartic situations. With modest means, but quite obstinately, the artist turns her models into disturbing installations. In a similar manner, Gabríela Fridriksdóttir’s drawings and films create mutants, both eye-catching and repulsive (such as elves, monsters, and the like). Her collaboration with Björk reveals her prolific creativity anchored in Icelandic imaginary.

A program gather films by different artists in a same projection. Ana María Millán’s short films embody the idea of delirium and terror. Influenced by Columbian horror films and the aesthetic of telenovelas, Ana María Millán’s works reflects the intrinsic urban violence. Likewise, Laurent Montaron’s narratives weave together nightmares, visions, and quite commonplace experiences, unveiling paranormal situations. Ulla von Brandenburg’s films mix tarot and circus characters. At first sight, Ulla von Brandenburg’s Tableaux vivants resemble to photographic images. Introducing a different vision of reality, Kan Xuan create oeiniric and harrowing worlds while Jordan Wolfson uses distortion and slow-motion to produce altered, science fiction images.

The works exhibited fit into a scenography designed by Rirkrit Tiravanija for his own retrospective - in giving birth to memory sedimentation.

Displacements, ambiguities, anachronisms, metalanguages fuse to generate a dreamlike reality, a reality concealed... plus loin derrière l’horizon.

* The title is taken from a work by Douglas Gordon (2005)

The exbition had the support of Embassy of Colombie.

Curator: Laurence Bossé, Anne Dressen, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Angéline Scherf

Catalogue of the exhibition I still believe in miracles part 2/2 Derrière l’horizon, 112p., n° ISBN: 2-87900-908-1 I still believe in miracles part 1/2 Dessins sans papier, 88p., n° ISBN: 2-87 900-907-3

Pressetext

I still believe in miracles II*
Part 2/2 Derrière l’horizon
Kuratoren: Laurence Bosse, Anne Dressen, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Angeline Scherf
Ort: ARC (Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris), Couvent des Cordeliers

mit Davide Balula, Ulla von Brandenburg, Trisha Donnelly, Louis Elzeard, Gabriela Fridriksdottir, Kan Xuan, Angelika Markul, Ana Maria Millan, Laurent Montaron, Adam Putnam, Tomas Saraceno, Markus Schinwald, Jean Laurent Tixador & Abraham Poincheval, Angelika Markul, Jordan Wolfson ...