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23/2/2004

Tours-detours de Babel

Mamco, Geneve

Rien ne presse/Slow and Steady/Festina Lente, sixth episode:

Mamco's Spring offerings renew the museum's interest in social and societal criticisms with Tour-détours de Babel, the sixth episode of the Rien ne presse/Slow and Steady/Festina Lente cycle. Thirteen monographic exhibitions are offering several themes of reflection to incite a re-evaluation of the relationship to the intimate (Thomas Ruff, Konrad Klapheck), to others (Tatiana Trouvé, Olivier Blanckart, Christoph Büchel, Chad McCail), to nature (Balthasar Burkhard, Michel Huelin, Pierre-Philippe Freymond, Piero Gilardi) and to escape trails (Gabriele Di Matteo, Stéphane Magnin, Frédéric Roux).

The Intimate
Mamco's collection policy, ever since its opening in 1994, has been based on noteworthy private loans made by artists, collectors and Swiss and foreign institutions. A principle many times extended to the realization of temporary exhibitions, notably Au rendez-vous des Amis, Collection André L'Huillier in 1995, or French Collection, un choix d'acquisitions du Fonds national d'art contemporain (Paris) in 2002. Presented in our Spring exhibitions are the collections of Pierre Huber, a Geneva gallery owner, and of other collectors, proposing a stroll amongst the photographic works of Thomas Ruff (Schwarzwald, 1958). On the brightly painted walls of the 4th floor, his series of striking photographs are shown : ultra-realist portraits opposed to dehumanizing machines, psychedelic abstracts opposed to scary starlit nights, as well as an assembly of dimly outlined pornographic nudes as in as many curio rooms. Raw and forceful reality as shown by the artist becomes a matter of doubt to the viewer as he faces up to Ruff's large prints.
As an echo to Ruff's objectionable and icy machines, the works of Konrad Klapheck (Düsseldorf, 1935) that he started painting in 1955 bear a startling identity with his biography. Fascinated by mechanical objects as witnesses to modernity he confers human forms to them, giving them an implication that goes beyond their common usage. The anatomy of a forsaken fiancée emerges from the curving lines of a sewing machine, a bulldozer turns into an image of death and oppression, a typewriter is used as a storyline in the quest of a father, a writer who passed away too soon, and later as a vibrant homage in Hebraic script to his Jewish wife killed in an accident. About this never-ending quest he said in 1963 : 'I painted machinery to create the exceptional (...) instead of which machinery taught me the vanity of existence and of my own self.'

The others
The work of Tatiana Trouvé (Cosenza, 1968) rests on a key concept : Le Bureau d'Activités Implicites (BAI) (The Office of Implicit Activities) that she defines as an architectural laboratory organized around various 'Modules' and 'Polders', each intended for a specific activity. Le Module Administratif, Archives (2003), La Maquette du BAI (2000) are as so many miniature, fictive, architectures that provide an opening on our thoughts about the least productive activities of our lives : administrative dealings, repeated and long-lasting queue lines, commuting, etc.
In another architectural style, the construction site shed (Close Encounters, 2002-2003) by Christoph Büchel (Basel, 1966) shown last year at Art Unlimited in Art Basel plunges the viewer into the sordid world of a squatted dwelling, apparently abandoned precipitously by its occupants. Familiar with life size and modified spaces, Ch. Büchel attempts to provoke a sense of uneasiness in the face of a situation evoking a feeling of 'déjà vu' or already known. The same theme is applied by Olivier Blanckart (Brussels, 1959), author of several actions and performances in public spaces, who transposes hypermediatized images into installations realized with humble materials such as cellophane tape or cardboard. These images, all related to death, the body of Che Guevara for instance (E Che Homo, 1999), or more recently the manifestations of compassion that took place around the house of a family whose members were murdered (Le Grand Afflicitif, 2004), produce through this materialization a cruel appraisal of our society where one's overexposed grief makes for someone else's happiness.
It is precisely the impact society has on individual behavior that Chad McCail (Manchester, 1961) explores in a production that borders on visual communication, comic strips, even propaganda. In an extremely direct style combining stylized figurines, logos and equivocal settings, he describes the place of desire in man within the collectivity and its consequences. At first, in an apparent naivety, the artist seems to want to bring an awareness of the fact that a heavy burden of frustrations and inhibitions makes long lasting relationships impossible. Then, in a second series of drawings, he denounces an education that fails to master one's desires and allows the prerogatives of some classes to subsist. An admission of failure that leaves little hope for a more hedonistic future.

Nature
From 1991 onward, Balthasar Burkhard (Bern, 1944) resorts to the long-standing grained heliography technique for the printing and multiplication of his pictures, to give a warmer vibration, more depth to black and a physical persistence that this technique only can ensure. The exhibition draws up an inventory of his production and allows the viewer to rediscover in a visual mood and through diverse formats a multiplicity of forms : falcon wings, androgynous bodies, cloudy mountainous landscapes, hand palms, virgin forests, gastropods, urban perspectives, shot from high above as well as various peculiar images that hold the artist's fascination.
Following the presentation this Summer of Biosphère, Piero Gilardi (Torino, 1942) is pursuing his explorations related to interactive multimedia installations with an extensive living art project in Torino. Conceived by the artist as an 'art scene within a naturalist context', it results from a collaboration between a team of architects and artists, among them Enrica Borghi, Ricchi Ferrero, Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, Tea Taramino and Nils Udo. This art scene will provide viewers with areas of liberty and dialogue, expression and experimentation workshops, as well as temporary artistic performances with a view to reveal nature as a privileged source of creativity to all of us. It is in this same vein that Pierre-Philippe Freymond (Geneva, 1961), who first studied genetics, created his installation Chimère I, a greenhouse built to grow tulips in extreme conditions : fed on veal DNA and deafening, low range sounds, they are supposed to bloom in the Spring... Fall of Flowers, the informatics video of Michel Huelin (Jura, 1962), proposes a desert-like universe where flowers fall from the sky and are heaped in a large metallic cage. The self-adhesive frieze of dogs by Ingrid Luche (Antibes, 1971) concludes this study of a disillusioned nature.

Evasion
Agitator and activator on the artistic scene of Bordeaux at the end of the 60's, Frédéric Roux (Bordeaux, 1947) is one of the three founding members of the Présence Panchounette group, self-dissolved in 1990. He developed an intense theoretical and plastic programme based on a principle of irony and parody. His exhibitions and artistic manifestations are realized in intimate quarters, and his fierce political texts are published in small numbers. For this exhibition, Frédéric Roux assembled a collection of works he produced during that historical period and under various aliases, a deceptively incoherent collection of puns, plays on words, references to history and to the state of art, of derisory objects and of militant posters.
Gabriele Di Matteo (Naples, 1957) already present in last Summer's Isola (Art) Project Milano, is now showing his film Voyage sur la terre, part of a vast project that includes paintings (some of which can be seen in our present exhibition), performances and sculptures inspired by Georges Méliès, the first science fiction film maker. 'On the dot of noon, five men-from-the-moon made their first appearance on the beach of Mr Hulot. Their mission on Planet Earth was to search for and find the woman-from-the-moon kidnapped by Méliès' men during their trip to the moon in the year 1902...' Deeply influenced by science fiction, situationism, and the culture of the sixties and seventies, Stéphane Magnin (Paris, 1965) creates environments in progress in which to live, in an aesthetic of recycling, from which everyone can draw references. Next to 1,3 G (2002-2003) shown on our Plateau des Sculptures since October, we present a new creation, Th8kosmos-index I (Gravité zéro), whose evocative forms are an invitation to rest one's body and soul.

Press conference Tuesday, 24 February, at 11:00

From 25 February to 9 May 2004
Opening Tuesday, 24 February, from 18:00

Thomas Ruff, Les oeuvres de la collection Pierre Huber (et quelques autres)
Olivier Blanckart, Le Grand Afflictif, 1998-2004 (with the Centre de la Photographie, Genève)
Christoph Büchel
Balthasar Burkhard | Héliogravures 1991-2003 et autres travaux photographiques
(exhibition organized by the Cabinet des estampes, Geneva)
Gabriele Di Matteo, Voyage sur la terre, 2003
Pierre-Philippe Freymond, Chimère I
Piero Gilardi, Parc d'art vivant
Michel Huelin, Fall of Flowers, 2003
Konrad Klapheck, Tableaux
Stéphane Magnin, Th8kosmos-index I (Gravité zero), 2004
Chad McCail, Snake, 2002
Frédéric Roux (with FredEx, Présence Panchounette, Monte Catsin and Mickey & Les Samplers), Back is back
Tatiana Trouvé, Juste assez coupable pour être heureuse
__________

Rendez-vous
Tuesday, 9 March, 18:30 : Commentary by Christian Bernard, Tour-détours de Babel
Tuesday, 16 March, 18:30 : Commentary by Rainer M. Mason, Balthasar Burkhard
Thursday, 25 March, 18:30 : Lecture by Jean-Louis Boissier, on the publication of his book La relation comme forme, L'interactivité en art (ed. Mamco, 2004)
Wednesday, 7 April, 18:30 : Lecture-debate Art / Vivant ? with Pierre-Philippe Freymond
Tuesday, 20 April, 18:30 : Frédéric Roux, debate on his novel, Ring, (Grasset, 2004)

Free entrance on the first Sunday of the month
Free guided tours : Sunday, 7 March; Sunday, 4 April; Sunday 2 May, at 15:00

Contact presse : Alicia Treppoz-Vielle, a.treppoz@mamco.ch, tél. +41 22 320 61 22

Mamco is opened daily from 12h00 to 18h00; Saturday and Sunday from 11h00 to 18h00. Closed on Monday
Closed on 9 April 2004

Mamco, 10 rue des Vieux-Grenadiers, CH-1205 Genève
tel. +41 22 320 61 22 ; fax. +41 22 781 56 81

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