Two exhibitions
dal 28/2/2007 al 31/3/2007
Segnalato da
28/2/2007
Two exhibitions
Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Toilet paper floating in the ventilator draft, pigeons pecking caviar on the street, Coca-Cola flowing endlessly from a can, shoes falling down staircases one pair after another, etc.: the videos of Koki Tanaka explore ordinariness and construct situations that are burlesque and subversive at once. Les freres Ajemian have transcribed Black Sabbath's Into the Void to a new version of the song performed backwards. Besides the singles and the video, the score, which is printed on plexiglass, and the original Black Sabbath cover will also be shown.
Koki Tanaka
Setting Up and Taking Down
Toilet paper floating in the ventilator draft, pigeons pecking caviar on the street, Coca-Cola flowing endlessly from a can, shoes falling down staircases one pair after another, etc.: the videos of Koki Tanaka explore ordinariness and construct situations that are burlesque and subversive at once. Playing with the laws of physics and the notion of infinite time, the artist tries to enhance the potential of objects encountered in our everyday lives.
Koki Tanaka has designed a special project for the Palais de Tokyo, conceiving the entrance into the gallery as a hole through which someone has thrown a bowling ball. Where the bowling pins should be, he has arranged items he collected from within the Palais de Tokyo (storerooms, offices, etc.): chairs, a waste-paper basket, a set of shelves, among others. These elements are integrated into the gallery space and knocked over, as if struck by the bowling ball. In the midst of the scattered pieces of furniture—remnants of his performance— is a video that retraces the initial event, thereby imbibing the work with the story of its own past.
Koki Tanaka has taken part in many exhibitions such as the Taipei Biennial (2006), the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial (2006), and The Door into Summer: the Age of Micropop at the Mito Art Tower (2007) in Japan. In 2005-2006 he was one of the residents at Le Pavillon, the study program attached to the Palais de Tokyo.
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Les Frères Ajemian
From Beyond
Together with his brother, Jason Ajemian, who is a jazz musician, Lucas Ajemian has transcribed Black Sabbath’s Into the Void from 1971 to a new version of the song performed backwards. The song, performed in the Palais de Tokyo the 1st of march with classical musicians will be recorded on video and shown backwards and forwards in the module for a month. Besides the singles and the video, the score, which is printed on plexiglass with “glow in the dark” paper as background, and the original Black Sabbath cover will also be shown, with IKB as a reference to Klein’s work with voids.
The project relates to the numerous accusations against heavy metal music’s deliberate inclusion of hidden, occult and satanistic messages, which stimulate people’s subconsciousness and debase morality among young people. By using classic instruments Ajemian elevates the song and plays on people’s fascination of meeting the sublime, seen as an opponent to the music’s supposed manipulating and degrading aspects. Into the Void describes a movement out in space away from the earth, which is marked by physical and mental decay to a new and better world where freedom rules. The journey into the void anonymizes and detaches the traveller from any connection with the surroundings. When Ajemian sings the song backwards he emphasizes the detachment from the context and a loss of language. The incomprehensible sounds create a new musical dialect, which still closely connected to the original adds a reflexive dimension.
Image: Koki Tanaka, Ordinary things, Extraordinary things and then, maybe, Something else, 2007.
Opening: 1 march 2007
Palais de Tokyo
13, avenue du President Wilson - Paris