calendario eventi  :: 

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28/2/2014

Deimantas Narkevicius / Nikhil Chopra

gb agency, Paris

Deimantas Narkevičius
Cupboard and a Play

Terse, though not without humor, Cupboard and a Play is the title of the new solo exhibition by Lithuanian artist Deimantas Narkevičius. The name links his sculptures to Narkevičius’ most recent film made in 2013. As the artist likes to say, films are an extension of his sculptures since both have something to do with space and movement: just as seeing a sculpture from every angle demonstrates that our understanding of it is fragmentary, watching a film play out produces the illusion.

Deimantas Narkevičius deconstructs, he produces ruptures, he juxtaposes; within his work, he conveys dual temporality and different perspectives, whether on film or in three dimensions. Open in Six Parts (1993) is an installation of a post-war armoire made of different sections. The six parts are placed on the floor differently according to the layout of the exhibition, and the object, a transformed ready-made, loses its function and reveals the various layers of its past. With Narkevičius, history is always treated from a living and permeable perspective; his works examine the relationship between memory and evidence, highlighting the different stages of perception. By using the tools or means of the era in question, he assumes an archaeological approach.

The performative sculpture piece, White Revenge (2008), transpires through subjective reconstruction and give and take over time. It consists of an office designed by El Lissitsky in 1930 (the current version was recreated by Tecta) into which Narkevičius had four bullets shot from an old weapon, a Mauser C96. The gun was used after the 1917 Revolution by both White Russians and their enemies. The allure of the original object and its corresponding revolutionary ideology appear well removed from the contemporary version destined for today’s middle class buyers and culture of consumption. And aside from any such observation, while the October Revolution failed, the artist brings the past to life by “performing” it. The events of history thus become material for the artist, subjects to be explored within his purview. If the violence from shooting an object entirely without personality rings hollow, the artist insists it is nonetheless present, though not necessarily where one expects. With such an act, the question remains unanswered. Other times, history is associated with a more personal experience, as with the sculpture Game No.1 (1995) refering to the soccer ball is rendered in bronze. Each segment of the ball has been casted with different parts of the artist’s torso. Through personal body, Deimantas revives the collective memory of the viewer.
To this group, the artist wishes to add a souvenir from the 2002 film called Kaimietis, from which he claims a single image and produces a print from its original 16 mm format.

The new work by Deimantas Narkevičius, Books on Shelves and Without Letters (2013) -which has been conceived for his solo show Da Capo at MAGASIN, Grenoble - is a two-channel video installation. It shows forty minutes of a concert in a bookstore called Keista in Vilnius by the young group ‘Without Letters’. The recording is reminiscent of music videos of the 80s with its atmospherics, optical back and forth and amplified camera moves. The artist doesn’t hide the spontaneous movements of both cameras. Playing with time, the grain of the video and aesthetics of the location even take us back to the beginning of video clips on TV, as if this band was already visible in that media. Certain pages from books that the audience reads during the concert occasionally appear and highlight the gaps in time.
Books on Shelves and Without Letters is the continuation of a fictional band tour created by the artist and begun three years ago with the showing of his film Ausgeträumt (2010). In that film, the artist offers to produce a video of the Lithuanian musicians’ first single. This visual transcription turned into the piece, and also became a way to introduce their music in artistic communities. Deimantas Narkevičius builds on this association to produce a new dynamic. This time the group ‘Without Letters’ truly appears to be the main character in the film.
Books on Shelves and Without Letters is an installation video that exists autonomously, with its own developments in the artistic space as much as in the musical one, and is evidence of Deimantas Narkevičius capacity to invent still new formats.

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Nikhil Chopra
The Black Pearl

After his first participation in the group show “Inventing a Future” in 2013, the Indian artist Nikhil Chopra takes over Level One for a solo exhibition called “La Perle Noire.”

Combining 16th century Dutch painting, romantic themes from the 19th century, and history painting, Nikhil Chopra liberates the border between installation, performance, painting and photography, offering multiple avenues of approach to the public. Colonialism, identity, and exoticism are skillfully addressed in each of his performances, with suggestions of answers to be found in the openings through choreographed texts. At each opportunity the artist brings to life an original character, derived from his own personal mythology or from collective histories.

From Thursday 6 March at 7:00pm to Saturday 8 March at 9:00pm, Chopra will take over Level One for fifty hours in a continuous performance that is visible to the public. The title 'La Perle Noire' has several references: it is an homage to Josephine Baker who under the nick name “The Black Pearl” took Paris by storm in the 1920s. Chopra appeared as Baker in his performance in 2011 in the Pompidou Center exhibition ‘Paris-Delhi-Bombay’. However, pop culture isn’t ignored with reference to the name of Jack Sparrow’s ship in “Pirates of the Caribbean’’, under whose decks the loot is stored.

The character Sir Raja was created by Chopra while he was living in Ohio in 2002. A stereotypical Indian Prince from the colonial era, Chopra uses him as an alter ego during performances in tableaux vivants. After 7 years of silence, Nikhil Chopra gets back to this character but activates him through a new avatar: Sir Raja IV.
Chopra often uses materials from daily life, such as lipstick, to transform his own body and the exhibition space. Used as a visual tool to paint and draw, the lipstick is also included for its smell. The nearly nauseating, sweet and persistent odor it releases portrays the association between masculine and feminine. In the artist’s world, objects, accessories and costumes are arranged such that they form scenes just like in a still life.
Here, dressed in linen and walking around among the pillows on the floor, Chopra begins by painting himself all in white as if to create a blank canvas for drawing and transforming himself into an object--no longer an individual. The sky blue walls gradually give way to drawings in red lipstick, wall to wall pillows cover the floor, and the artist’s fantasy of a sea of blood is released, from which will emerge Sir Raja.

«The challenge for an audience is to sustain the long duration of the work: its slow gestures and unfolding narrative, as they watch me, or gaze at me through a camera lens, maintain safe non-intrusive distance so as to not disturb my ‘private’ dinner, lounge, wash or sleep time. I watch them back, negotiating their space around me. In a performance I voluntarily resign myself to the solitary world that my character inhabits, even as I am continuously being watched and gazed at. Live art performance allows me to experience my immediate world viscerally, in the here-and-now, and engage my muscles and mind in alternative ways».

The performances are specific to the site or their environment. For “La Perle Noire” the history of the Marais is referenced through the neighborhood’s commerce in precious metals and jewelry shops. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, aristocratic Parisians build their townhouses in the neighborhood. Five centuries later, Sir Raja takes his turn in the neighborhood, highlighting the luxury and opulence typical of the Maharajas.
In 1925, Bhupinder Singh, then Maharaja of the State of Patiala, came to Paris with a collection of gems and asked the jeweler Cartier to create an exceptional necklace, combining traditional forms and Art Deco design. Known today as the “Patiala Necklace,” the project was a kind of reverse colonialism in which the supremacy of Europe was challenged. The Maharaja was keenly aware of his role as an Indian prince and rebel at a time of white superiority. Recently seen as part of the “Cartier: Le Style et L’Histoire” exhibition at the Grand Palais, Nikhil Chopra was fascinated and inspired. The artist immersed himself in photos from the end of the 19th century of the sort in keeping with this Maharaja so full of panache and at ease in his role as Indian prince and European dandy who lived in luxurious pomp, and who would put to shame the bling of any hip hop star today.
This shift can be felt in the structure of the “La Perle Noire” performance piece itself: starting out as a white angel in the middle of a becalmed sea, the character gradually gives way to the dandy, and finally the monstrous Sir Raja, alone on his raft in the middle of a storm.

« My performances may be seen as a form of storytelling that intermingles familial histories, personal narrative and everyday life. The process of performing is a means to access, excavate, extract and present them. Autobiography is one place I know where to begin from. All urgencies, desires, knowledge, emotions, expressions, stem from that place that I am rooted in. My sense of identity is deeply connected to my sense of location in time and space.»

Performance from March 6 at 7 pm to March 8 at 9 pm

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