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press release
The French Academy in Rome—Villa Medici is pleased to present Le numerose irregolarità, an exhibition by Katharina Grosse and Tatiana Trouvé, curated by Chiara Parisi.
For Katharina Grosse and Tatiana Trouvé, the Villa Medici has become a meeting ground where they both reflect on the history of the institution in a multivalent approach that involves sculpture, painting, and the hosting architecture. Strikingly different yet complementary, their respective oeuvres reveal a shared desire to disrupt the traditional boundaries between media.
Both artists are fascinated by the unstable relationship between inside and outside, and in this all-encompassing project, they investigate the past and present of the Villa Medici, working to transcend space, support and medium in a series of gestures inspired by the history of the institution itself.
This context of the French Academy inspired them new productions of works such as the two manifesto-pieces they conceived: Ingres Wood for Katharina Grosse and Les Indéfinisfor Tatiana Trouvé.
Brought together and overlaid, their works set up the whole exhibition as a paradigm of a hand-to-hand struggle, a confrontation, and their shared discrepancies.
In the spaces of the Villa Medici emerges a shared radical stance, founded on the concept of reversal. While for Katharina Grosse, space in all its forms is at the service of painting where the current environment becomes the picture surface; Tatiana Trouvé comes up with unpredictable assemblages and combinations. As a result, the two artists place us in the situation of losing our familiarity with certain objects.
In describing the exhibition at the Villa Medici, curator Chiara Parisi states: "Le numerose irregolarità possess a rhythm that fluctuates constantly between instinct and reflection, between visual power and conceptual density; revealing the radicalism of Katharina Grosse and Tatiana Trouvé in the fullness of their respective polarities, they let us surrender to their spellbindingly perturbing visions.”
Le numerose irregolarità by Katharina Grosse and Tatiana Trouvé is the fourth act in the UNE series program, initiated in 2017 by Villa Medici director Muriel Mayette-Holtz and curated by Chiara Parisi in which Annette Messager, Claire Tabouret with Yoko Ono, Elizabeth Peyton with Camille Claudel have been invited to conceive new exhibitions.
A trilingual French/Italian/English catalogue published by Electa-Mondadori in their contemporary art series accompanies the exhibition conceptually conceived by the two artists as a "perpetual" book.
In parallel of this publication, another editorial project is also released, related the group exhibition Open at Night that took place in the Gardens of the Villa Medici, from December 16, 2017 to February 1, 2018.
For the first time, the Gardens of the French Academy opens their door at night to the public, curator Chiara Parisi conceives a nocturne and experimental vision of the Gardens, in the form of a labyrinth of open-air installations by internationally renowned contemporary artists: Rosa Barba, Camille Blatrix, Christian Boltanski, Nina Canell & Robin Watkins, Maurizio Cattelan, Trisha Donnelly, Jimmie Durham, Elmgreen & Dragset, Felix González-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Joan Jonas, Hassan Khan, Lee Mingwei, François Morellet and Otobong Nkanga.