Visual artists, creators, fashion designers, experimenters, tattooists, musicians…
As part of the original exhibition “City Prince/sses”, a good fifty artists will be exhibiting at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (France) from 21 June to 8 September 2019.

Without any geographical grouping, the artists of this brand new exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo are presented most of the time with new productions and in situ interventions.The exhibition “City Prince/sses” is presented as an imaginary, multiple and complex city, without borders, messy, staggering and creative: an unpredictable laboratory, which is always in motion and being (re)constructed.

DHAKA, LAGOS, MANILA, MEXICO CITY and TEHRAN are expressions of a tissue of contradictions, as seen in their saturated traffic which coexists with digital networks which supposedly work fluidly.

Quite clearly, these megacities are very different from one another. Their cultural, political and social singularities teem with numerous narratives which are all side-tracks providing glimpses into their identities, devoid of anything that could be univocal.

Between skyscrapers and shacks, urgency and patience, megacities are undergoing a chaotic expansion, mingling transfers of capital with technological connexions in financial centres, generating urban margins with numerous inequalities.

This vast, disorderly movement transforms cities into ceaseless work sites, favouring imaginary deviations. The artists which then emerge are thus the flâneurs of the 21st century, the hackers of our responses to an urban environment which is often functional and standardized.

However, as visitors stroll through the exhibition aisles, they quickly realize that these megacities are not the subject of the “City Prince/sses” exhibition. They are in fact a context of research, a playground, where creators sample the multiple layers that constitute it to extract an excessive hybridization, in constant metamorphosis.

Raw and head-spinning hangings, mysterious landscapes, luminous or opaque zones, backrooms and traps: the presentation of the show has been conceptualised by the architect Olivier Goethals, according to the rhythms of day and night, from profusion to desaturation, alternating between monographic zones and terrains for encounters. He has elaborated an architectural pathway which reveals and accentuates the lines of force in the building, which is here being envisaged as an immense common area.

Guest artists : Aderemi Adegbite, Mehraneh Atashi, Shishir Bhattacharjee, Biquini Wax EPS, Britto Arts Trust, Chelsea Culprit, Ndidi Dike, Doktor Karayom, Ema Edosio, Kadara Enyeasi, Falz, Dex Fernandez, Dina Gadia, Betzabé García, David Griggs, Ha.Mü, Timmy Harn, La Havi, Amir Kamand, Hoda Kashiha, Lulu (Chris Sharp, Martin Soto Climent et leurs artistes), Tala Madani, Farrokh Mahdavi, Pow Martinez, Arash Nassiri, Leeroy New, Emeka Ogboh, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Adeola Olagunju, Ashfika Rahman, Mahbubur Rahman, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, John Jayvee del Rosario & Maine Magno, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, Reetu Sattar, Mamali Shafahi, Reza Shafahi, Justin Shoulder, Mohammad Shoyeb, Manuel Solano, Newsha Tavakolian, Stephen Tayo, Tercerunquinto, Timmy Harn, Traición, Wafflesncream, Maria Jeona Zoleta, Zombra

 

Curator: Hugo Vitrani
Associate curator: Fabien Danesi
Scenographer: Olivier Goethals

www.palaisdetokyo.com

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Faced with the many previous studies and exhibitions, the route favours the Mediterranean East, specific to the French colonial empire. The corpus of works has been organized into two distinct axes: the human figure and the landscape. Two routes announced by “La Petite Baigneuse” (1828, Paris, Louvre Museum) by Ingres and “Innenarchitektur” (Interior Architecture, 1914, Wuppertal, Von der Heydt Museum) by Paul Klee.

These two lines illuminate each other throughout the tour, which is organized into 7 sections. The first section sets up the historical figures of the movement: Ingres and Delacroix are surrounded by their disciples and tributes to their vision. Faced with Ingres’ drawings and in particular his studies for the “Grande Odalisque”, Delacroix and Chassériau bring a more real but no less classic vision.

The second section continues this exploration of the human figure, increasingly carried by a real knowledge of the East but always nourished by tradition and fantasy, because, as Eugène Fromentin points out in his book “Un Été dans le Sahara”: “We must look at this people at the distance where we should show ourselves: men up close, women far away; the bedroom and the mosque, never”.

From Chassériau (“Moorish Woman Out of the Bath”, 1854, Strasbourg, Museum of Fine Arts) to Gérôme (“Jeune Orientale au Narguilé”, n.d., private collection), knowledge through travel does not obliterate the use of iconographic prototypes borrowed from mythology and classical tradition. The figure of harem, the new Venus, cannot be portrayed in a faithful way, because it remains invisible to all. Gérôme, with his “snake charmer” (c. 1879, Williamstown, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute) or Édouard Debat-Ponsan (“Le Massage : scène de Hammam”, 1883, Toulouse, Augustin’ Museum), thus renewed a classical and imaginary iconography by presenting it on a background of an Islamic mosaic.

The third section, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (“Le Marchand de couleurs” (Le pileur de couleurs), circa 1890-1891, private collection, on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston) to Eugène Fromentin (“Le Pays de la Soif”, circa 1869, Paris, Orsay Museum) and Paul Lazerges (“Caravan near Biskra, Algeria”, 1892, Nantes, Museum of Arts) makes it possible to make a transition from the figure to the landscape, by presenting genre scenes that reveal the artists’ simultaneous interest in the figure and its context. This is the beginning of a transformation that leads to an increasing attention to light and the structure of ever purer landscapes.

In this perspective, the fourth focuses on this progressive geometrization of the landscape, which reduces narrative data to the essential, concentrates on the composition and rhythm of colours: Jules-Alexis Muenier and Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, Albert Marquet and Camoin. The geometry and whiteness of the city of Algiers thus inspired Muenier (“Le Port d’Alger”, 1888, Paris, Orsay Museum) to create forms that announced those of Camoin in “Le Golfe de Sidi-bou-Saïd” (1923, private collection) and Marquet in “La Mosquée de Laghouat” (1939, Albi, Toulouse-Lautrec Museum, CNAP deposit).

Faced with this, the fifth section establishes a parenthesis around light and impressionist and neo-impressionist artists: Renoir, with “Le Ravin de la femme sauvage” (1881, Paris, Orsay Museum), paved the way for Théo van Rysselberghe in an essential work on the stain of colour that remained without posterity, but which contributed to the emancipation of colour.

Finally, the sixth and seventh sections, again focusing on the opposition of the figure and the landscape, focus on a radicalization of geometry that coincides with the emergence of new pictorial means. On the one hand, Émile Bernard, Jules Migonney, Albert Marquet and Henri Matisse renew the theme of the human figure by simplifying it. Muslim decorative arts then took on an increasingly important place and made it possible to move into a two-dimensional space. Thus, Bernard’s “Abyssine en robe de soie” (1895, Paris, Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum) or Marquet’s “Intérieur à Sidi-Bou-Saïd” (1923, Le Havre, MuMa) accompany Matisse’s experiments (“Odalisque à la culotte rouge”, 1923-1924, Paris, Orangerie Museum).

On the other hand, Wassily Kandinsky or Paul Klee cross the line of abstraction, linked to the experience of pure colour and glare. This section is an opportunity to rediscover some of Kandinsky’s lesser-known works, such as “Arab City” (1905, Paris, MNAM, Centre Georges Pompidou) or “Oriental” (1909, Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau), which are gradually changing into pure colour. As Paul Klee notes in his diary during the trip to Kairouan in April 1914: “Color possesses me. There is no need to try to grasp it. She owns me, I know that. This is the meaning of the happy moment: color and I are one. I am a painter.”

Faced with this, Vallotton ends the tour with a tribute to Ingres, “Le Bain turc” (1907, Geneva, Museum of Art and History), strange in its composition as much as in the absence of orientalist motifs. Through the figure or landscape, Orientalism gives way to a radical experience, at the origin of modern art. In both cases, the East disappears to give way to pure painting.
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The exhibition “Oriental Visions, from Dreams into Light” is presented at the Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris, until July 21, 2019 

Curator: Emmanuelle Amiot-Saulnier, Doctor in Art History

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« I am interested in transformation and artifice. My newest exhibition will engage with the history of France and its outward facing relationship to black and brown bodies, specifically relating to sexual proclivity. Gauguin features heavily in the imagination of France and her global interface – with that comes an entire history of complicated gazing. I interrogate, subsume, and participate in discourse about Māhū, about France, and about the invention of gender. » .– Kehinde Wiley, 2019

Kehinde Wiley, star of the American art scene, official portrait painter of Barack Obama, and founder of the multidisciplinary artist residency program “Black Rock Sénégal” is back in Paris. For his first Parisian exhibition since the 2016 show at Petit Palais, he will be unveiling a new series of paintings and a video-installation based on his time spent this past year in Tahiti.

Wiley’s new works are focused on Tahiti’s Māhū community, the traditional Polynesian classification of people of a third gender, between male and female.  The Māhū were highly respected within their society until they were banned by Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

Wiley’s portraits of beautiful, transgender Tahitian women reference and confront Paul Gauguin’s celebrated works, which also feature subjects from the transgender community, but are fraught with historical undertones of colonialism and sexual objectification.

Building off of Wiley’s earlier portraits that addressed issues of masculine identity and virility, these new portraits explore issues of identity through the lens of transformation, exploring both artifice and artificiality as a trans-cultural phenomenon.

Over the past fifteen years, Wiley has developed a remarkable body of work that at once questions and participates in the western art-historical canon of portraiture. Wiley’s encounter with Tahiti joins with the artist’s continued journey across the contemporary world, following his explorations of North America, South Asia, and West Africa.

Wiley’s focus on Tahiti now offers the opportunity to re-examine France, its colonial history, and its image through the prism of Gauguin’s work. True to his oeuvre, this exhibition presents a uniquely political and aesthetic perspective on the power of art to shift perception and to make visible history’s forgotten figures.

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GALERIE TEMPLON
28 rue du Grenier Saint-Lazare
75003 Paris – France
Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 7 pm

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Where the sun burns the skin: the presence of women artists from Latin America at Art Paris Art Fair 2019, a reflection…

“ no son todas las que están, ni están todas las que son ”

For its 2019 edition, Art Paris Art Fair presents “Southern Stars”, an exploration of Latin American art from 1960 to the present day, offering a historical and contemporary tour of the artistic production of this territory with its multiple tensions: artistic, political and existential.

This article is a reflection on the particularities of Latin American art made by women. From a historical, contemporary, social and commercial point of view.  Discussions with Valentina Locatelli, curator, and Catherine Petitgas, collector, were essential for the development of this reflection.

Tupi or not tupi

To be, in Latin America, unfolds in two ways: on the one hand the definition of an essence and on the other hand, a changing state. This duality of the first verb brings a fluidity dear to the artistic production of this territory where the sun burns – sometimes – the skin. A tension between being and not being, between essence and body, suggestion and affirmation, between tupi or not tupi⁽¹⁾ ?

This sun that burns – sometimes – the skin, forces us to be in constant movement, to create life strategies, refuges. Encourages us – sometimes – to look elsewhere to build our own territory. Latin American women actively participated in the act of sculpting 20th century art. Conversely, some of these artists have been kept in the shadows. This is partly due to latent sexism, conservative ideas that are gaining ground and diluting slowly, but also because of a system that defines the quality of the work through the artist’s visibility and success.

Woman artist / Woman of artist

At the beginning of the century, some figures pushed their branches towards the light, such as Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfati and Frida Kahlo for the modernist avant-gardes. Lygia Clark for the neo-concretists. Lygia Pape and Ana Mendieta for various mediums. Continuously perceived, for some of them, as the woman of an artist and not as a woman artist.

These names now printed in art history books (some, not all – names, and books) synthesize a constellation of artists that deserved to be considered as stars and not as satellites around other stars.

In order to establish a link with today’s production, we exchanged with curator Valentina Locatelli, based in Switzerland and exhibition curator for “Etoiles du Sud”. Locatelli believes that “contemporary art plays an important role in the image we have abroad of Latin America. First of all from a discovery point of view, because the richness of the production is impressive and deserves to be seen”, but specifies that this is only a “portrait of 8 female artists”, referring to the parallel presentation of a selection from Catherine Petitgas’ collection, named “Amazones” and which presents the work of women from the countries of the Amazon basin, mainly Brazil (Beatriz Milhazes, Maria Nepomuceno, Rivane Neueunschwander, Lygia Clark, Anna Bella Geiger), Colombia (Liliana Angulo, Beatriz González, Nohemí Pérez), Peru (Sandra Gamarra, Ximena Garrido-Lecca), Venezuela (Lucia Pizzani and Sol Calero).

Place of speech 

For Locatelli, curating an exhibition on the art scene in Latin America, being herself born and based in Europe, does not seem to him to be a barrier or create tensions at a time when questions related to the place of speech are becoming more and more present.“In my opinion, this will bring great richness for both sides; a very interesting dialogue between cultures. This will be an opportunity to broaden horizons and points of view. Especially since this selection was established “in constant consultation with artists and galleries”, says the curator.

Politeness of materials / Poetics of improvisation

Catherine Petitgas, collector, art historian and philanthropist, presents a selection from her collection in the exhibition called Amazons, as these 8 women on display share the fact that they come from countries in the Amazon region. For Petitgas, as the collection grows, the more crucial the research work becomes. “I work without a consultant. However, I find that to be a collector it is essential to be well informed, to know, to be aware. This research and reflection effort is therefore necessary”.

This relationship to a knowledge put into practice, active and sensitive, dialogues precisely with the particularities of the contemporary art scene in Latin America, according to the collector. The particularity of these angles of view (or attack?) transcends borders. First,“There is a resonance outside Latin America. We find megacities in America but also in Southeast Asia. This urban chaos, inequalities, exacerbated wealth, creates a particular art form,” Petitgas explains.

“An art form between Arte Povera and ready-made. There is a certain politeness towards the social context. A politeness resulting from the choice of materials. We are not going to create a golden work, it is not ethical”. This ability to find poetry in chaos is very present in Latin American production. The question of mood also finds its place in a pioneering way among these artists; would it be a strategy to sublimate difficult realities? To be voluntarily sonso, sneaky, phony, as the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector suggests, would it be an escape from a latent violence of reality? Establish a poetics of the improviser, a manual for the use of the gambiarra⁽²⁾ ?

Building or severing bonds?

The modern and contemporary Colombian scene is for Catherine Petitgas a case study. Plunged into an acute crisis and fractured from the interior, the country found common ground thanks in part to art. The artist Doris Salcedo, for example, offers a very powerful memory work. Beatriz Gonzales is also responsible for this great work of memory and (re)building relationships: “Art tells what history cannot,” the artist often says. A memory not necessarily connected to nostalgia, but closely linked to the present.

Today, having to present an exhibition focused on women so that women can be exposed is, to some extent, tragic. It would never seem, when referring to any exhibition, that these are “male artists from Brazil, China, Cameroon”. On the other hand, this today encourages us to take this tragic burning in our hands and move forward. It is necessary to expose the fractures of a system that is certainly reinventing itself. To create a close link between arte e vida. Where the sun burns the skin, where it is hot even in the shade…

*Special thanks: Catherine Petitgas, Valentina Locatelli, Talisson Melo, Rafaela Sales, Joao Vitor Maturana.  

Art Paris Art Fair from 4th to 7th April 2019 – Grand Palais, Paris (France).

*For more information, please consult the following links: 

→ Art Paris Art Fair 2019 – Between discovery and diversity

→ www.artparis.com

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⁽¹⁾Tupi or not Tupi, from the ” Manifeste Anthropophage “, published in 1928 by Oswald de Andrade. Tupi is the name of one of the tribes people living in Brazil before the arrival of the Portuguese.

⁽²⁾ A word from Brazilian Portuguese that refers to an improvised solution put in place when trying to fix an object without all the necessary tools. Like using chewing gum to keep the frame of a painting straight.

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To go further : 

• Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985 – Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Andrea Giunta (2017)
• Contemporary Art in Brazil – Hossein Amirsadeghi . Catherine Petitgas (2012)
• Contemporary Art in Colombia – Hossein Amirsadeghi . Catherine Petitgas (2016)
• Critica feminista en la teoria e historia del arte, genero y feminismo : perspectivas desde américa latina – Andrea giunta

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Discovery and diversity are the key words of this must-see spring event in Paris, which combines regional exploration of European art from the post-war period to the present day with a cosmopolitan look at emerging world creation..

For its 21st Art Paris edition, with forty-six solo shows (compared to thirty-six in 2018), 150 galleries (compared to 143 in 2018), 44% of new entries, 20 countries represented (including, for the first time, Cameroon, Bulgaria and Peru), the 2019 selection shows a strong move up the range. Favouring a thematic approach and open to all artistic media, Art Paris once again cultivates its difference, that of being an international fair turned towards discovery that focuses on the European stages from the post-war period to the present day while exploring new horizons of international creation whether they come from Asia, Africa, the Middle East or Latin America.

Women artists in the spotlight

Curated by AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, the 2019 edition presents a critical and subjective overview of the work of women artists in France.
25 specific projects by women artists will be selected from amongst the exhibits of participating galleries. This selection is divided into four themes: Abstraction, the Feminist Avant-Garde, Image and Theatricality. AWARE has also been invited to write a critical essay that situates each artist’s work in its historical context.

AWARE – Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions aims to produce, index and distribute information about 20^th century women artists – was co-founded in 2014 by art historian Camille Morineau, who specialises in women artists. She is also the director of exhibitions and collections at the Monnaie de Paris.

Among the list of women artists chosen by AWARE, we note the presence of the Franco-Malagasy artist Malala Andrialavidrazana presented by the Caroline Smulders gallery. Originally from Madagascar, Malala Andrialavidrazana (born in 1971) has lived in Paris since the early 1980s. The artist has made a name for himself through his photographs, which explore the links between personal history and cultural identity, intimacy and universality, and highlight the contrast between the perception of the world by the West and the countries of the South. In her series of Figures works, which she began in 2015, the artist explores the possibilities of collage to question the visual heritage of the colonial era and its impact on our perception of the world. By superimposing fragments of images from different periods such as ethnographic engravings, banknotes, record covers, etc., she tackles the subjects of otherness, cultural mixing or the need to question preconceptions from a “Eurocentric” imagination. It thus proposes a form of decolonization through images, all in allusion and poetry.

An exploration of Latin American art with the “Southern Stars” section

In 2019, Art Paris is setting out to explore Latin American artfrom the 1960s to the present day. Around twenty European, Asian and Latin American galleries are presenting an ensemble of 60 Argentinean, Brazilian, Chilean, Colombian, Cuban, Mexican, Peruvian and Venezuelan artists. In parallel, other projects such as a video programme, installation artworks, the presentation of works by Latin American women artists from the collection of Catherine Petitgas and conferences at the Maison de l’Amérique latine will highlight the creative effervescence that reigns on the continent.

*Southern Stars: An Exploration of Latin American Art is curated by the independent exhibition curator Valentina Locatelli, who is based in Switzerland.

As part of the celebration of Latin America, Art Paris also hosts a selection of works by South American artists from Catherine Petitgas‘ private collection. Entitled “Amazons”, this exhibition brings together women artists from the countries of the Amazon basin, mainly from Brazil (Beatriz Milhazes, Maria Nepomuceno, Rivane Neueunschwander, Lygia Clark, Anna Bella Geiger), Colombia (Liliana Angulo, Beatriz González, Nohemí Pérez), Peru (Sandra Gamarra, Ximena Garrido-Lecca), Venezuela (Lucia Pizzani and Sol Calero) and whose work focuses both on female identity, particularly among ethnic minorities, and on the tropical aesthetics of these regions rich in biodiversity and whose ecology is threatened.

*Catherine Petitgas is a London-based collector and art historian specialising in modern and contemporary art, with a particular focus on Latin America.

We invite you to read our article on the Southern Stars section and Catherine Petitgas' collection here

A historical and current journey through the Latin American scenes

Galleries spread throughout the fair’s different sectors invite visitors on a journey of discovery through Latin America’s different scenes, considering them from both a historical and contemporary point of view.

Galería Freijo is focusing on two historical figures from the Mexican scene, abstract sculptor and co-founder of Stridentism Germán Cueto and Felipe Ehrenberg, a leading light in the field of Mexican conceptual art in the 1970s. Numerous galleries are showcasing the work of the proponents of geometric abstraction from the 60s and 70s, including Carlos Cruz-Diez(Venezuela), Ivan Contreras-Brunet (Chilli), Darío Pérez-Flores (Venezuela) and Marino di Teana (Argentina). Women artists are also in the spotlight with solo shows featuring Leonor Fini, a surrealist painter born in Buenos Aires (Weinstein Gallery/Galerie Minsky); Mexican artist Carmen Mariscal, whose work addresses questions of gender and female stereotypes (Ana Mas Project); and Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, a Chilean artist who is the subject of a mini-retrospective at the Wooson Gallery featuring her drawings that touch on questions of sex and religion.

The Cuban scene is the subject of a group exhibition at the Xin Dong Cheng Gallery, which brings together six artists from different generations: Manuel Mendive, Raúl Martínez, Adonis Flores, René Francisco Rodríguez, Michel Mirabaland Yunier Hernández Figueroa.

Two galleries Nosco and Galerie Younique are showcasing the young Peruvian scene with emblematic figures such as José Carlos Martinat and José Luis Martinat, two brothers who are famous for their installations that question the past and the present of post-colonial societies. La Balsa Arte (Bogota/Medellin) is presenting a dialogue between the works of three figures from the Colombian scene with drawings (Juan Osorno), paintings (Julian Burgos) and installation art (Luis Fernando Peláez), whereas Galería Solo/Eva Albarran & Christian Bourdais has given over part of its space to Carlos Amorales, a major figure on the Mexican scene who works in different media such as video, installation art, photography and paper.

A particularly well represented African art scene 

For this 2019 edition of Art Paris, several galleries also present artists from African art scenes…

Among them: Galerie Dominique Fiat exhibits the works of Nicola Lo Calzo, Hardy Sy, Rachid Koraïchi (Algeria), Safâa Erruas (Morocco), but also several artists from Benin: Emo de Medeiros, Dominique Zinkpé, Cyprien Tokoudagba ; Galerie ARTCO – presents the works of Marcelo Brodsky, Marion Boehm, Justin Dingwall (South Africa) ; Galerie Capazza will exhibit the works of Francis Limérat (Algeria) ; Galerie MAM – Boris Nzebo, Hervé Yamguen (Cameroon), Ngimbi Luve (Congo), Oumar Ball (Mauritania), Ousmane Niang (Senegal) ; Galeria Filomena Soares – Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola); Galerie Chauvy – Soly Cissé (Senegal); So Art Gallery – Morran Benlahcen (Morocco), Kabbaj Houda; Finally Galerie Claire Gastaud exhibits the works of Jean-Charles Eustache (Guadeloupe), and many others…

With such a complete program Art Paris 2019 is definitely the must-see event of spring in Paris !

ARTSKOP3437 official media partner of Art Paris Art Fair 2019

For more information on the 2019 edition of Art Paris, please consult the following links:  : 

→Art Paris Art Fair highlights women artists from Latin America

→ Official website of Art Paris Art Fair

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