The Pavement and the Beach
dal 6/7/2011 al 29/8/2011
Segnalato da
Jean-Michel Andre'
Jesse Ash
Alex Bag
Diann Bauer
Ashley Bickerton
Martha Colburn
Will Cotton
Shezad Dawood
Nooshin Farhid
Mounir Fatmi
Mick Finch
Claire Fontaine
Margarita Gluzberg
Jeremy Hutchison
Steven Le Priol
Edouard Leve'
Peter Lewis
Guillaume Paris
Clunie Reid
SIGUI
Sol'Sax
Reena Spaulings
Marianna Uutinen
Mick Finch
Guillaume Paris
6/7/2011
The Pavement and the Beach
Paradise Row, London
A group show curated by Mick Finch and Guillaume Paris. This exhibition is a reflection on the historical shift that has undercut the utopian hopes encapsulated in the slogans of May '68. It explores the debris and flotsam that have washed up onto the receding shores.
A group show curated by Mick Finch and Guillaume Paris in collaboration with Paradise Row
Jean-Michel André, Jesse Ash, Alex Bag, Diann Bauer, Ashley Bickerton, Martha Colburn, Will Cotton, Shezad Dawood, Nooshin Farhid, Mounir Fatmi, Mick Finch, Claire Fontaine, Margarita Gluzberg, Jeremy Hutchison, Steven Le Priol, Edouard Levé, Peter Lewis, Guillaume Paris, Clunie Reid, SIGUI, Sol'Sax, Reena Spaulings, Marianna Uutinen
The exhibition's starting point is a phrase that defines an historical moment: "Sous les pavés, la plage" - 'Beneath the pavement, the beach' - was hurriedly scrawled beneath the windows of a Parisian shop front during the May 1968 student protests that escalated into the largest strike in history, posing the most serious challenge to the status quo in any modern Western nation.
Inspired by the "Situationist International", the slogan conjures imagined battle lines: On one side the manufactured world of power, efficiency, subjugation, work, consumerism and regulated thought. On the other, an utopian world of radical leisure, freedom and imagination, situated, metaphorically, on the beach.
Earlier this year, during the student protests in London against the cuts in education, the phrase reappeared, ghost-like, on a wall in the central quad of University College London. A symptomatic appropriation, torn from its heroic past and pressed into the present, the slogan seemed strangely second-hand, insubstantial and inert.
The beach has long since been colonized by capital. The logic of globalization has transformed symbolic orders to serve its own ends, refashioning cultural forms upon models of communication and spectacle. The sphere of leisure and entertainment, far from being a refuge, has become an arena in which power insidiously dreams itself into new disciplinary forms.
This exhibition is a reflection on the historical shift that has undercut the utopian hopes encapsulated in the slogans of May '68. It explores the debris and flotsam that have washed up onto the receding shores.
"The Pavement and the Beach" is curated by Mick Finch and Guillaume Paris in collaboration with Paradise Row and is part of 'Insidious', an on-going project of exhibitions, events and publications by Finch and Paris, mapping out the aforementioned issues and the critical strategies they give rise to.
Image: Ashley Bickerton: The Alley, 2009
Opening: 7 July 2011 - 18:30
Paradise Row
74 Newman Street - W1T 3EL London
Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 10 am - 6 pm, Thur 10 am - 8 pm, Sat 11 am - 6 pm