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19/2/2007

Onamatterpoetic

Mamco, Geneve

Rolywholyover, first episode.

Siah Armajani
Bujar Marika
Christian Robert-Tissot
Jean-Claude Silbermann
Joëlle Tuerlinckx
John M Armleder
Franz Erhard Walther

Amor vacui, horror vacui, the major retrospective of John M Armleder's work, ended our exhibition cycle Mille et trois plateaux on quite a high note. This spring we will begin our seventh cycle,1 Ro- lywholyover.2
The cycle's first episode is entitled Onamatterpoetic 3 and will feature five monographic shows by Siah Armajani, Bujar Marika, Christian Robert-Tissot, Jean-Claude Silbermann and Joëlle Tuerlinckx, along with a new presentation of Franz Erhard Walther's Werklager and a variety of rehangings among our collections' permanent exhibitions. In addition, John M Armleder will remain present on the Mamco's first floor notably with his large installation Everything, as well as the prints brought together by the Cabinet des estampes, and an entirely new gallery.
We are pleased to extend at least in part a show that has met with enormous success and are very much looking forward to exhibiting for a second time Siah Armajani and Christian Robert-Tissot, both of whom were featured respectively in 1995 and 1996.
We are coming back then to our practice of using the museum in multiple ways. It's an approach that enables us to diversify our outlook on contemporary art, single out our loyalties and make way at the same time for new proposals.

On the museum's fourth floor, Joëlle Tuerlinckx (Brussels, 1958) has created on site in the seven galleries of the Magasin des panoramas all of the elements forming her show. The Belgian artist's work takes the form of an investigation-reappropriation of the host venue. Using a wide variety of means (variations in the lighting, slide projections, digital slide shows, drawings, photos, objects, etc.), Tuerlinckx subtly reappropriates the venue's walls, spaces and routes, where she introduces her sensitive exploration of the material world as so many individual statements of her thinking, which is elaborated progressively and measured not in instances of space but rather in the space of instances. This then is how visitors might understand the title of her exhi- bition-workshop, 64 EXPOSITIONS-MINUTE. SUR MESURE, ECHELLE VARIABLE (64 One-Minute Shows. Made to Measure, Sliding Scale).

On the third floor, a show featuring the work of Siah Armajani (Tehran, 1939), L art n'est pas le salon de beauté de la civilization (Art Is not Civilization's Beauty Parlor), spreads out over 11 areas starting with the re-presentation of 50 scale models (an earlier donation to the museum by the artist) in a new permanent gallery conceived by Armajani as a piece of sculpture that doubles as a furnished room. This new exhibition, designed to be entirely complementary to the retrospective Mamco mounted 11 years ago,5 features a range of art, from recent pieces, some seen here for the very first time, to never-before-shown works dating from the 1950s (done in Tehran) and ‘60s (produced in the United States), to conceptual artworks (late ‘60s), to a large body of work that also hasn't been seen at Mamco prior to this (including the important Dictionary for Building). In all, nearly 250 items.
Since 1974 Armajani has defined himself as a public artist. His main field of activity is in public space then. He has created pedestrian walkways, reading gardens, gazebos, etc. His interior works are either models or installations and constructions that prepare or extend his reflection on the forms of an art that is addressed to, inspired by or tends to contribute to the “common place.”

Three very dissimilar artists share the second floor.

The painter and writer Jean-Claude Silbermann (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1935), who was part of the activities of the Surrealist group from 1958 to 1969, has filled three galleries with his poetic world. The Galerie des problèmes résolus features Babil-Babylone (Babble-Babylon), a vast ensemble of painted cut-out wooden figu- res. As if affected by a loss of gravity, this erratic troop of images and characters seems to come from some dreamlike ballet where the roles are endlessly redistributed according to the sudden shifts of an altogether personal mythology. The same goes for Qui es-tu être humain? (Who Are You Human Being?), an original ensemble that translates in images Alfred Jarry's Surmâle (Supermale), the famous “modern novel” on the mechanics of love, and which Büro Kippenberger becomes a heavenly theater of. La Chambre offers a dis- creet receptacle for the Cabinet des velléités. A helter-skelter collection of inconsequential objects is hunting around there for its forgetful logic. Visitors will grasp why this show is entitled Un homard dans le faux pas, or A Lobster in the Faux-pas.

The Genevan artist Christian Robert-Tissot (Geneva, 1960) will return to Mamco with eight (perhaps nine) new pieces designed for his latest show, Wall Street. The title refers in particular to two galleries, La Rue and the former Espace d'archisculpture, which hold the pictures, wall paintings and other Styrofoam or fluores- cent-lamp art making up the exhibition. The medium of Robert-Tissot's art is language in fact (words, phrases that are nominal or not). His artworks are based on both their overall formal reception and the readings that they inevitably solicit and which constitute the piece as much as a commentary on its and the observer's status or the situation of the exhibition itself. While the expression “Wall Street” metonymizes the general idea of investment or capitalist speculation, the museum context also points up in the terms the thoroughly speculative nature of works of art, which may offer excellent financial yields these days as well as remarkable theoretical speculations on the nature of art.

The Geneva-based Albanian artist Bujar Marika (Tirana, 1943) sees his work first as an act of offering a gift or contribution to art and society. Although 63 years old, Marika only began to define himself as an artist in his own right six years ago. The portmanteau word Bâtimental 6 serves as the title of this show, which Marika created in its entirety in the three galleries Mamco put at his disposal. His pieces “speak” of time, history, the history of art, modernity, logic, randomness and the concrete venue in which they appear and for which they are dreamed up. Evincing a postminimalist and postconceptual esthetic, these works are first and foremost a cosa mentale yet are no less ready to adopt its forms, whose perceptible qualities are striking for both their pure simplicity and the precise beauty of their formal design.

1 The six earlier cycles were: Fragments d'une collection à venir; Rudiments d'un musée possible; Patchwork in Progress, Vivement 2002!; Rien ne presse / Slow and Steady / Festina lente; and Mille et trois plateaux. 2 Rolywholyover is a Joycian portmanteau word from Finnegans Wake. John Cage borrowed it for the title of his famous 1992 MOCA show in Los Angeles.
3 Onamatterpoetic suggests both “on a poetic matter” and “onomatopoetic”—another portmanteau word from Finnegans Wake. 4 After this statement by the philosopher John Dewey: “As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure.”
5 Contributions anarchistes 1962-1994 (Anarchist Contributions, 1962-1994).
6 The French portmanteau word here conflates bâtiment, a building, and mental. Trans.

Events Program (free admission):

Wednesday 28 February 2007 6.30 pm
Voix-off. Pascal Poyet, "Après dissipation des brumes matinales"

Wednesday 7 March 2007 6.30 pm
Siah Armajani by Christian Bernard

Wednesday 14 March 2007 6.30 pm
Bujar Marika and Christian Bernard

Tuesday 20 March 2007 6.30 pm
Joëlle Tuerlinckx and Catherine Pavlovic

Wednesday 21 March 2007 6.30 pm
Voix-off. Pierre Alféri, Serial

Sunday 25 March 2007 4.pm
Surrealist Tea Party along with Jean-Claude Silbermann

Tuesday 3 April 2007 6.30 pm
Christian Robert-Tissot and Françoise Ninghetto

Wednesday 25 April 2007 6.30 pm
Voix-off. Pierre Le Pillouër, Parer aux maîtres

Wednesday 9 May 2007 6.30 pm
Voix-off. Emmanuelle Pireyre, Pour faire oeuvre d'homme que je m'éveille

Press: Clarisse Jaouen, c.jaouen@mamco.ch, phone +41 22 320 61 22.

Press Conference : Tuesday 20 February 2007 11 am
Opening : Tuesday 20 February 2007 from 6 pm to 9 pm

Mamco Musée d'art moderne et contemporain. 10, rue des Vieux-Grenadiers, CH-1205 Genève Opening hours:
Tuesday to Friday: 12 am - 6 pm
Saturday and Sunday: 11 am - 6 pm
Closed on Monday and Friday 6 April 2007
First Sunday of the month: free admission and free guided tour at 3 pm

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