28/5/2013
Ready (To Be) Made
Le Bal, Paris
Bas Jan Ader - Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs. Both activate the "readymade" substance of an object or a body placed before a photographic lens or a movie camera. Both simultaneously convey the cold nature of conceptual art and the absurdity of burlesque comedy. And both deliberately provoke the "accidentally true".
While several generations apart, the work of Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader, who was born in 1942 and emigrated to California in 1963, collides with that of Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, two Swiss artists born in 1979 and now living in Berlin.
Both hover between the Old World and the New. Both activate the "readymade" substance of an object or a body placed before a photographic lens or a movie camera. Both simultaneously convey the cold nature of conceptual art and the absurdity of burlesque comedy. Both seek harmony and find it using a paucity of means. And both deliberately provoke the "accidentally true".
Of course, one falls whereas the others erect. And the gravity in the films of one finds its counterpoint in the facetious frivolity of the others. The remorseless logic of the dramatic "climax" of Bas Jan Ader's films is echoed by the repeated serendipitous occurrences in the work of Onorato and Krebs.
Yet in both cases, the very fragility of an act reveals its existential nature. An act that questions rather than condemns, that experiences the world rather than explaining it.
Diane Dufour
LE BAL, in Paris, is a platform for exhibitions, publications, ideas and education centred on the image as document (photo, video, cinema, new media, …)
Image: Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Happy ending, 2005. Courtesy
Press contact: Jerôme Meudic +33 1 44707550 meudic@le-bal.fr
Opening wednesday 29 May 2013, 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Le Bal
6, Impasse de la Défense 75018 Paris
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Wednesday, Friday and Saturday : noon – 8pm
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