The exhibition "No Drones", by Louise Lawler, features a set of works on vinyl, two new photographic prints, and works on paper. "Maniere Noire", Martin Szekely, comprises two sets of shelving in carbon fibre, Shelf and Tower.
Louise Lawler
No Drones
Blondeau & Cie is delighted to announce a new exhibition by Louise Lawler: No Drones, organised in collaboration with Metro Pictures, New York. The exhibition features a set of works on vinyl, two new photographic prints, and works on paper.
A major presence on the American scene, Louise Lawler started her career in the 1970s alongside artists of the "Pictures Generation" such as Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger and Richard Prince, developing a practice grounded in conceptual strategies.
Using photography as her main medium of expression, the artist represents artworks both on display and in storage. Taken in museums, galleries, auction houses, storerooms and the homes of collectors, Lawler's photographs are framed so as to reveal the surroundings, context and mode of presentation of artworks.
Her work is effectively about the re-presentation of the image in various forms. As Philippe Kaiser writes of her famous Salon Hodler:
"Salon Hodler, a color photograph taken in the noble home of a collector in Geneva, exists in a variety of [other] formats, as a black-and-white matted print, as a paperweight, a projection in public space, as well as a tracing. […] Whereas the black-and-white version appears as a document of the original work, in the best spirit of structuralism, the traced and enlarged version represents the skeleton of the picture. Having mnemonically lodged in our mind and imagination, the picture resonates merely as its own ghost. [The tracings] demonstrate empirically the further steps that can still be taken to explore the extreme ends and corners of pictures and their contexts."
In her recent series of tracings, created in collaboration with illustrator John Buller, Lawler revisits her photographic compositions in the form of drawings reproduced as black lines printed on vinyl. Applied directly to the wall, these tracings, which exist in digital form, can be printed and reprinted in dimensions that may be varied to fit the wall on which they are exhibited, while still respecting the proportions of the original work.
In the "adjusted to fit" series, the artist retains the original photographic image but digitally distorts this to match the proportions of the given wall. Printed on vinyl, these works are installed, centred and produced in any chosen scale, creating a direct relationship with their display settings.
In the "traced and painted" works on paper, the tracings are reprised in smaller formats, with certain motifs hand-painted in what is a first for this artist.
The eponymous installation of 12 glass vessels, each printed with the words "No Drones," shifts ambiguously between the status of ordinary objects and artworks, implying a direct exchange between art and society.
These installations express an idea also found in the many ephemera that play a central part in this artist's work—the colouring books made from her tracings, matchboxes, paperweights, serving mats with reproductions of photographs, and invitation cards expressing a political opinion, like one made by Metro Pictures in 2003: "No drinks for those who do not support the anti-war demonstration"—and which query the status and finality of the artwork.
Born in Bronxville, New York in 1947, Louise Lawler lives and works in Brooklyn.
Her work has been widely exhibited in Europe and the United States. In recent years, she has had significant solo shows at Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2013), the Albertinum, Dresden (2012), the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2006), Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York (2005), the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2004), Portikus, Frankfurt (2003), and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1997).
She has taken part in a number of historic group shows, including The Pictures Generation: 1974–1984 at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Documenta 12, and the Whitney Biennial.
Louise Lawler's works are held by numerous institutions, including: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; MoCA, Los Angeles; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MoMA, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Glenstone Foundation, Potomac, Maryland; MNAM, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Jumex Collection, Mexico City; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Kunstmuseum, Basel.
The exhibition Louise Lawler: No Drones is showcased in the gallery space (ground floor of the building).
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Martin Szekely
Manière Noire
What at first looks like a monolith is in fact hollow:
an assemblage of rectangular
and square boxes, open at one end
and with sides five millimetres thick. They are stuck together
and mutually interdependent in the effort that will be de-
manded of them once filled. Impregnated with and solidified by
resin, the carbon fibre uni
fies the entire structure.
Martin Szekely
From 17 September to 31 October 2015, Blondeau & Cie are delighted to present
Manière Noire
, a new series by Martin Szekely, at 5 Rue de la Muse in Geneva.
Manière Noire
comprises two sets of shelving in carbon fibre,
Shelf
and
Tower.
The
Shelf
items are fixed to the wall but seem to hang in space, while the
Tower
elements are amassed to form
freestanding parallelepipeds.
Martin Szekely began using carbon fibre in 1985, when his
Chaise Carbone
was a first in the world of domestic furni-
ture. It was followed by
Heroic Carbon
in 2010 and
Manière Noire
in 2013.
Making the most of the material’s low density and remarkabl
e resistance to traction and compression, this new series
offers light, strong structures
that multiply useable space.
Wholly determined by their function, the simple forms of
these shelves are open to evolving uses. Made from a single
material, they are physically limited to what is strictly nec
essary. This elementariness reflects Martin Szekely’s ongoing
research into uses and materials.
The distinctive aesthetic of this series
is visually underscored by the alternation of square and rectangular modules, the
interplay of full and empty forms, and the silky sheen of t
he woven material as it modulates the reflected light.
Manière Noire Shelf
comprises 5 models, 5 shelves of different sizes and orientations.
Each model is an edition of 10 (+ 2 AP).
Manière Noire Tower
comprises 3 models, 3 shelf units of different heights.
Each model is an edition of 10 (+ 2 AP).
Each piece of shelving is signed and numbered by Martin Szekely
Image: Louise Lawler, Abat-Jour 2015
Direct cibachrome mounted to plexiglass on museum box with wooden edges
153 x 104.8 cm 60.2 x 41.3 in.
Edition of 5 (+1 AP)
Press Contact: Daniela Franck +41 22 5449595 muse@blondeau.ch
Blondeau & Cie
5 rue de la Muse 1205 Geneva Switzerland
Hours: Thursday–Friday 2–6:30pm
Saturday 11am–5pm