Jardins de Bagatelle II

Jardins de Bagatelle II
Galerie Tanit - Munich
September - October 2014
Jardins de Bagatelle II
Curtis Anderson
Martin Assig
Ricardo Brey
Wim Delvoye
van Eetvelde Sautour
Lionel Estève
Michel François
Laurent Grasso
Mona Hatoum
Urs Lüthi
Marcel Odenbach
Tony Oursler
Charles Sandison
Rosemarie Trockel
Hossein Valamanesh
Ghassan Zard
Bagatelle : something frivolous, something of little value
or importance.
Bagatelle is a word that has been used ironically to speak
about luxurious items, and gallant forms of amusement. In 1775,
as a result of a legendary bet between the hedonistic and lavish
MarieAntoinette and her 19-year-old brother, the Count of Artois
and youngest brother of Louis XVI, the park of Bagatelle was
conceived in the Bois de Boulogne – Paris.
In the space of two months the Count of Artois realized a playful
and romantic park with lush roses, caves and ponds, in contrast
to the geometrical classic French landscape style.
Inspired by this fantastic work, Galerie Tanit – Munich presented
“Jardins de Bagatelle I” in 1990, an exhibition showcasing works
from different established and emerging artists of that time.
24 years later, it is time to present the second edition of this
highly successful exhibition. “Jardins de Bagatelle II” invites you
to take a stroll into a maze of sculptures, videos and collages from
a selection of international artists.
Curtis Anderson
Curtis Anderson is an American artist born in 1956. He founded
the Curzon Studio in New York in 1980, a studio that produced
architectural models, frames, furniture as well as sculptures. Curtis
Anderson has been living and working in Cologne since 1985.
The techniques and materials Anderson uses in his work play a very
important role. His production requires patience and imagination
to discover different levels of meaning and interpretation. Through
multiples ways Curtis explores questions around tantrism, combining
magical or mystical elements to interrogate continuity and time
concepts.
The untitled piece on display is subtle and enigmatic: three wooden
items contrast with the slate chalkboard on which they are installed.
Conscientiously sculpted these forms remind us of hourglasses. As
a metaphor for the passage of time these wood sculptures depict the
present as being between the past and the future. This piece can also be
read as a symbol of human existence, a reflection on mortality.
Untitled
1988
Wood, slate, chalkboard coating
120 x 45 x 45 cm
Martin Assig
Martin Assig is a German artist born in 1959 in Schwelm. He
lives and works in Berlin.
His artistic approach interrogates creation itself through different
concepts of Religion and the Cosmos. As a passionate demiurge the
artist rebuilds cult sites in order to question their place in our society.
Churches like reliquaries, enclosed edifices, become silent sculptures
interrogating the shape, the sheath of belief.
In this exhibition two churches are on display: “Dom and MS Jenseits”
(Cathedral and MS Afterlife), one white and one black. Like two
antagonistic poles, the positive and the negative, these two sculptures
give rhythm to a promenade weaving between good and evil.
Martin Assig works with encaustic, an antique painting process using
wax. The use of this traditional technique, simultaneously a protective
coating and a substance to burn oil, is also a way to broach subjects
pertaining to religion. This technique, which is at the centre of his
artistic process, is also used on his paintings and drawings and gives
his work transparency and lightness, opacity and darkness.
MS Jenseits
2008
Encaustic, mixed media
60 x 42 x 25 cm
Dom
2008
Encaustic, mixed media
60 x 60 x 38,5 cm
Ricardo Brey
Ricardo Brey was born in Cuba in 1955; he lives and works in
Belgium. Considered one of the best representatives of contemporary
Cuban art, Brey participated in the Documenta IX, Kassel in 1992,
Venice Biennale in 1999, and recently had an important solo exhibition
at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, la Havana, Cuba.
Heir of Afro-Cuban beliefs tinted by animism, the artist confers a
spiritual dimension to all his pieces, transforming the common into
the sacred. Trivial found objects, varied materials from the everyday
context are at the heart of his paintings, sculptures and installations.
Through subversive irony, his work plays with tensions created by
juxtapositions, unexpected meetings between materials, forms and
textures. By synthetizing, and transforming, the artist creates a personal
mythology both poetic and political. Since he left Cuba, Brey provides
a point of view from the intersection between two cultures, where the
tension between individual and collective consciousness is a source of
creation.
Borrowing from multiple universes, “The Difficulty of Producing an Egg”,
resumes this desire to confront different contexts by combinations, to
create a new sense. A small bird put on an oversized egg formed by
chaotic lead material is presented on an old-fashioned wooden stand.
Incongruity and deep metaphor of human vanity emanate from the
scene: the egg as a symbol, the egg with its elegant lines is also a tribute
to Brancusi’s “The Sleeping Muse”.
The difficulty of producing an egg
2013
Lead, silver, wood
126 x 30 x 20 cm
Wim Delvoye
Born in Belgium in 1965, Wim Delvoye currently lives and
works in Gand, Belgium.
Using the art of diversion the artist takes over and deforms patterns,
which inspire him. Renowned as a bad boy of contemporary art, he
gained international recognition through multiple participations in
major exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1990), Documenta
XI (1992), “Cloaca” at the New Museum in New York (2002) and more
recently at the Musée du Louvre in 2012.
Representing two persons, a couple interlaced, “The Secret” is a part of
his bronze production. Through his re-reading, Delvoye plays with the
kitschy aspect of mannerist sculpture bringing us back to traditional
Flemish art. Indeed, he conceptually and physically distorts the image
of lovers, questioning this rigorous idea. The couple is formed and
deformed by what seems like a whirlwind, like a Rorschach test where
everyone who takes a stroll through the exhibition, can project himself
or herself.
Le Secret
2011
Bronze, polished
Unique
46,6 x 22,9 x 16,2 cm
van Eetvelde - Sautour
Catharina van Eetvelde and Stéphane Sautour worked together
for over two years. The Fukushima disaster initiated the creation of the
collective “Call it anything” which hosts their collaboration.
Catharina Van Eetvelde is a Belgian artist born in 1967, she lives and
works in Paris. Mainly employing the medium of drawing, she explores
circuits and streams inside the body, using the expressive and the
stylising power of the line. She composes particular universes of forms
with minimal use of colour. Stéphane Sautour is a French artist born in
1968. He lives and works in Paris. Using science and new technologies,
Sautour’s work emerges as complex and evolutionary. Based on social
behaviour and urban development it explores reality and fiction to
criticize how society promises a safe and controlled future that is
paradoxically very unpredictable and mysterious.
This assemblage explores delicate balance and gravity. The title, an
enumeration of the components describing what is happening without
mentioning the content, puts the viewer just below the level of narrative.
(left:) STEEL, ZINC, POLYMER, RUBBER, COTTON(STRAP) to STEEL(STRING) to
SILK(YARN) to GLASS to VACUUM to GLASS to METHYL ETHYL KETONE to
ETHYL ACETATE, BUTYL ACETATE, ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL, BUTYL ALCOHOL,
CYCLOHEXANONE, PLASTIFIER, CHROMIUM OXIDE(COATED)
(middle:)
(right:)
STEEL, ZINC, POLYMER, RUBBER, COTTON(STRAP) to WAX(WAXED)
to WOOL(FELTED) to LINEN(THREAD) to ROCK(STONE)
STEEL, ZINC, POLYMER, RUBBER, COTTON(STRAP) to WAX(WAXED) to
LINEN(THREAD) to CLAY(RAW) to WAX(HEATED)
2014
Lionel Estève
Lionel Estève is a French artist born in 1967. He lives and works
in Brussels.
His work has been included in several shows such as: “A chaos”, DCOTA
Florida; “I can talk to my cat: thinking what other are thinking”, Palais
des Beaux Arts Brussels; “Migrateur” curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist,
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
With a variety of tiny and small elements, the artist creates sculptures,
collages and drawings. Those are the results of intense colors
combinations, between abstraction and representation. The untitled
collage on display can be defined as a spatial drawing as powerful as it
is fragile, stimulating perception of an infinite dreamed reality.
Untitled
2004
Collage, mixed media
85 x 99 cm
Michel François
Born in Belgium in 1956, Michel François lives and works in
Brussels. His work has been included in several shows, among others:
Documenta IX Kassel in 1992, Salon Intermédiaire Centre Georges
Pompidou in 2002, “Pieces of Evidence” Bortolami Gallery, New York in
2014.
Michel François’ artistic path explores a variety of media including
sculpture, photography, installation and video.
François often plays with the event of instabilities, where objects are
placing themselves between two states. His work can be seen as an
exploration of cause and effect. A gesture cutback rhymes with the
precision of the form and the proliferation of meaning.
As an echo to the connection between his drawings that are transformed
into sculptures known as Scribbles, the ethereal sculpture presented
reveals a struggle between black and white, geometric strictness and
gesture happenstance, stability and instability. Offering an optical and
spatial game, the artist gives his piece the obviousness of a drawing,
where lines depict a sensible itinerary to cross.
Untitled
2008
Plastic, cement, metal lacquered
INSTALLATION VIEW
GALERIE TANIT, MUNICH 2014
Laurent Grasso
Born in France in 1972, Laurent Grasso lives and works in Paris.
He was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2008, and was included in
Manifesta 8 and in the 9th Sharjah Biennial. Recent solo shows include:
“The Horn Perspective” at the Centre Georges Pompidou, “Gakona” at
the Palais de Tokyo and Uraniborg, co-produced by the Musée d’Art
Contemporain de Montréal.
The artist has developed a multifaceted body of work that explores the
fictional potential of great iconographic discoveries. He builds parallel
realities to test our system of knowledge and critical capacities. A
perpetual shift of the viewpoint is at the heart of Grasso’s aesthetic
sensibility, for him the point is not to test the truth but to exploit its
fractures and tensions. With a deep sense of mystery, Grasso explores
space and temporality, standing on the boundaries between reality,
belief and science.
Reminding us of a fairytale world, the neon light installation “1610” on
display is inspired by the constellation discovered by Galileo in 1610, it
evokes the problematic of the rehabilitation of Galileo a few years ago
by the Vatican.
1610
2011
Neon
Variable size
Edition 3/5
Mona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum was born into a Palestinian family in Lebanon in
1952. She lives and works in London and Berlin. She has participated
in numerous important exhibitions including the Turner Prize in 1995,
Venice Biennale in 1995 and 2005, Documenta IX in 2002. Her solo
exhibitions include Centre Georges Pompidou in 1995, Tate Britain,
London in 2000, in 2013, Kunstmuseum St Gallen and Mathaf in Doha
in 2014.
In her artistic approach, Hatoum explores problematic issues such
as exile and conflict zones through the intimate and the domestic.
Her work, as politically involved as it is poetic, includes installations,
sculptures, photography, videos and works on paper.
The sculpture “No Way III” presented here is particular in that she
transforms every-day domestic objects and manipulates them to be
foreign things, repulsive and dangerous. This hybrid colander joining
frivolity and strength creates a gap probing our relationship to the
world.
No Way III
1996
Stainless steel
Height 10 cm, diameter 25 cm
Edition 4/6
Urs Lüthi
Urs Lüthi is a Swiss artist born in Luzern in 1947. He lives and
works in Munich, Germany. He has contributed to the Swiss Pavilion at
the Venice Biennale in 2001, and was awarded the Arnold-Bode-Preis
by the City of Kassel in 2002.
He is one of the most important European conceptual artists. His work
engages in a complex, ambivalent and playful way with photography,
performance, and sculpture.
Lüthi’s art is provocative. Famous for his self-centered research, his ideas
are based on the ambiguities of both the individual and the object. Full
of irony and derision, it explores questions about the human substance
and its transformation through different modes of representation.
From the series “Art is a Better Life”, these two works reflect the
advertising universe, referencing the art poster tradition. Like small
skits, each “computer-painting” creates a dialogue between the human
body and the artificial forms and spaces. Like all his work these two
pieces are punctuated with his self-portrait - his profile on a pedestal as referential pattern.
Direction East VI
From the series “Art is the Better Life”
2011/2012
Colour-Print, plexiglass
153 x 116 cm
Direction East XVII
From the series “Art is the Better Life”
2011/2012
Colour-Print, plexiglass
153 x 116 cm
Marcel Odenbach
Marcel Odenbach was born in 1953 in Cologne, Germany. He
has produced an extensive body of tapes, performances, drawings
and installations and has gained international recognition as one
of the most important German video artist. Throughout his artistic
career, Odenbach analyzed the advertising tools and mechanisms of
persuasion of the masses in post-industrial society. His aim is to find
the convergence points and dialectics between an introspective view
and social influence. Using the same techniques of exploiting montage
and collage, in his predilection for videos and drawings, he asks the
viewer to not only see the general overview but to also pay attention to
details.
The large drawing on display titled “Nach einer stürmischen Nacht“
(after a stormy night) is a perfect example of how his approach induces
multi-layered messages. Enhanced with ink, a forest landscape is
formed by combining texts and images. A certain collective memory
is shaped with press clippings and images of different visual histories
such as Lucian Freud’s famous painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping.
Nach einer stürmischen Nacht
2014
Collage, photocopy, ink on paper
110 x 150 cm
Charles Sandison
Charles Sandison is a Scottish artist who lives and works in
Tampere, Finland. He has participated in important international
group exhibitions, at the Museum of Art Lucerne Switzerland (2005)
and the Kunstmuseum Bonn Germany (2006) among others. His
work was presented at the Shanghai Biennial in 2006. His solo shows
“Correspondance: Sandison – Monet“ at the Musée du Quai D’Orsay in
2008 and “The River” at the Musée du Quai Branly in 2010 were very
well received.
His videos employ a language created using computer software and
algorithm and are projected in dark spaces. Physics, medicine, biology,
and informatics are the subjects of his interest. The artist takes the
viewer into a fascinating world, a kaleidoscopic universe of symbols
and language. It seems as if the words have acquired a life of their own,
performing an individual choreography. Fully immersed, wandering
between words and signs, the spectator feels the movement of a binary
structure through a poetic scheme.
Forever
2014
C++ Computer Code
Edition of 5
Tony Oursler
Tony Oursler is an American artist born in 1957. He lives
and works in New York. Exhibitions of note include: “Studio: Seven
Months of My Aesthetic Education (Plus Some),” Musée D’Orsay, 2004;
“Dispositifs”, Jeu de Paume, 2005; “The Influence Machine”, Tate
Modern, London, 2013.
Oursler stages videos within installations that he calls “devices”. These
“devices” involve sculpture, design, installation, performance and
soundtrack. They transport us into a world with no rational boundaries,
which explores relationship between the individual and mass media
systems with humour and irony.
Considered as a major figure in the recent history of video art, Tony
Oursler revolutionised the medium, introducing his “sculpture-screen”
concept. Since 1990 he has produced an extensive body of work with
a video projection technique that rejects the rigorous frame. Through
this process he questions, on different surfaces, the infinite visual
possibilities to create new perceptions. Inscribed in a very elaborate
dramatization, favourite themes broached are death, desire, money,
obsession and media.
The piece “Feedback”, presented here, can be seen as a memento mori.
He addresses human vanities of our time. Working with space and time
he gets us back to our basic instincts.
Feedback
1998
Mixed media, Sony CPJ 200, projector, VCR, videotape, fiberglass skull
68,6 x 55,9 x 91,4 cm
Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel was born in 1952; she lives and works in
Cologne. In 1999 she represented Germany at the Venice Biennale and
participated in Documenta in 1997 and 2012. More recently she had
important solo shows in Wiels, Belgium and at The Artist Institute, New
York.
In the middle of the 1970’s she introduced questions about the female
role in society and questioned the system hierarchy within the German
art scene then dominated by male artists. Her approach stands out
among contemporary artists through the unconventional use and
diversity of materials and processes she combines. Ceramics, paintings,
drawings, collage, digital prints, films and videos are elements to
distort and combine, to produce the myriad of forms that comprise her
practice. Trockel’s cosmology explores the multiple facets of things,
the ambivalence, the ambiguity and the inversions to always renew her
approach, extend it and complete it.
On view is an organic shape, a ceramic piece titled “Sand Dollar”. It
revives techniques of artisanal handicraft and vernacular technology;
the material seems to open first to later withdraw into itself. On the other
hand the piece “Mottenbild” (Moth Picture), referencing a painting by
Lucio Fontana, uses the potential of silkscreen printing which the artist
simultaneously distorts to create an opaque surface, scattered with
random openings that seem like holes in a fabric created by moths.
Sand Dollar
2014
Ceramics, glazed
52 x 45 x 14 cm
Mottenbild
1992
Unique
Silkscreen under Plexiglass
80 x 100 cm
Hossein Valamanesh
Born in Iran in 1949, Hossein Valamanesh has been living and
working in Australia since 1973.
Valamanesh has received numerous awards including the Austria
Council Residency in Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 1991 and the
Australian Council Fellowship in 1998.
His work is often made with elementary substances, natural materials,
found or every day objects affected by cultural history and personal
memory. It is always based on the relationship between the human and
the natural world in concert with spirituality, Iranian poetry and Sufi
poetic tradition.
About the “Kettle” in the show he notes: “Fire is like a living element and
a flame is such a poetic symbol of life and its vulnerability. I used that
kettle in my kitchen for many years. But now, the fire is not underneath
the kettle, but inside it, filling this mundane object with light and life”.
Indeed, the kettle converted into an oil burner is a perfect example
reflecting the artist’s way to give an object a poetic and symbolic feeling.
The second installation titled “Face to Face” presents a mat on which
the artist disposed prayer caps found in a mosque in Lahore. Mirrors
placed inside the caps refer to the concept of prayer being a process
of self-reflection. This piece started with locally found materials and
evolved with the mirror, the pile and the dust added later on. This opens
up playful imagination, metaphysical questioning and quiet reflection.
Untitled (Kettle)
1994
Copper kettle, oil lamp
18 x 25 x 21,5 cm
Face to Face
2002
Strawmat, mirrow, loam
90 x 198 x 18 cm
Ghassan Zard
Ghassan Zard is a Lebanese painter and sculptor born
in 1954. He lives and works in Beirut. He has participated in
multiple group shows such as “Vous avez dit abstrait?” Galerie
Tanit, Beirut, 2013.
Initially his paintings were influenced by lyrical abstraction.
His large-scale canvases depict a coloured rhythmic universe
reminiscent of music partitions. Compared to his pictorial work,
his sculptures are more restrained but always tinted with irony.
Combining polished wood, aluminum and raw steel, Zard creates
a bestiary of forms, interpreting the anatomy of reality to recreate
a personal mythology. Playful by all appearances, his sculptures
hide something that is deeply settled in the artist’s approach.
Beyond the shape, something tries to come to the surface, the
naked wood, full of life, is stapled with a rigorous but intermittent
violence. It seems to contain a body in the making, a tacit entity,
however, extremely present, waiting in the heart of every piece.
Dreamlike animals become a metaphor for human beings and
represent an artist’s desire to give a protective and ludic shape
to an old “souvenir”. Buried in the subconscious digression, this
sculpture can be read as the return of the repressed, skillfully
formed, skillfully mastered.
Untitled
2013
Wood, metal
Unique
22 x 19 x 19 cm
Untitled
2013
Wood, metal
Unique
100 x 40 x 40 cm
INSTALLATION VIEW
GALERIE TANIT, MUNICH 2014
We would like to thank the following lenders:
Martin Assig
Wim Delvoye
Lionel Estève
Urs Lüthi
Marcel Odenbach
Bernier / Eliades Gallery Athens for Charles Sandison
Margret Biedermann Gallery Munich for Tony Oursler
Sprüth Magers Gallery for Rosemarie Trockel “Sand Dollar”
Photos credits Christoph Knoch
© The artists and the galleries