calendario eventi  :: 

X

16/2/2005

Ann Hamilton

La Maison Rouge, Paris

Phora

Ann Hamilton has achieved international recognition for her imposing sitespecific installations which subtly incorporate sound, video, photography, and often vast accumulations of diverse objects and materials. The artist repeatedly refers to architecture as a skin we inhabit.

For this, her first solo exhibition in Paris, the artist has created phora*, an utterance and a vocal expression inspired by the history and architectural context of the (red) house ( la maison rouge), and by two symbolic places: the Bastille as the voice of public demonstration and the Bastille Opera as a demonstrative public voice.

Ann Hamilton transforms the different exhibition spaces into platforms from which the genesis of vocalisation and vocal expression are explored.

Immediately upon entering the space, visitors find themselves surrounded by multiple mouths the vehicle for the voice of medieval wood sculptures. These open mouths, close-up video stills, are printed on paper and cover the walls around the red house and the patio.

Moving through this gathering of silent figures, visitors step into a darkened room that is filled with the sound of a voice diffused from spinning ceilingmounted speakers. Caught in what becomes a chorus, an assembly of voices, they intersect the powerful beam of a video, projected onto the walls.

In another room, filled with light, the imposing form of a silk lined refugees' tent, is suspended from the ceiling and tethered to the walls. The outline it makes on the floor is that of the red house. But whereas the house is firmly anchored and accommodates the foundation's offices, the inside of the tent is visible to all and loses its function as a refuge.

On the following room the airspace is filled with clothes. The artist has hung them from the ceiling among back-to-back megaphones that diffuse the sounds of articulated speech.

Stepping down into the basement, visitors arrive at a wooden platform; its dimensions are the same as the red house and the tent. This structure resembles a stage, but its height makes it impossible for a speaker to stand upright.

For Ann Hamilton, public life implies construction: the construction of space, meaning, language and deliberation in order to voice a common utterance.

* phora: etym. Greek to bear > metaphor, also in reference to the Latin fora > forum.

Biography
Ann Hamilton was born in 1956 in Lima, Ohio. After training in textile design at the University of Kansas, she studied sculpture at the Yale School of Art. From 1985 to 1991 she taught sculpture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before returning to Columbus, Ohio where she lives and works. In 1993 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 1995 she has been represented by Sean Kelly Gallery in New York.
Over the past twenty years, Ann Hamilton's work has been shown at such prestigious institutions as the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington ( View, 1991), Dia Center for the Arts, New York ( Tropos, 1993), the MoMA, New York ( Projects 48: Seam, 1994), the Tate Gallery, Liverpool ( Mneme, 1994), the Muse d Art Contemporain, Lyons ( Present, Past, 1997-98), the Muse d Art Contemporain, Montreal ( Mattering, the body and the object, 1998), and the Wanas Foundation, Sweden ( Lignum, 2002). In 2004 she created a vast installation for the MASS MoCA in North Adams, USA. She represented the United States at the Venice Biennial in 1999.
Ann Hamilton has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions, notably at PS1 ( Caught in the Middle, a performance with Susan Hadley, 1986; Artists Projects, 1997), the Whitney Museum ( Elements: Five Installations, 1987; BitStreams/Data Dynamics, 2001), the MoMA ( Readymade identities, 1993; Thinking Print: Books to Billboards, 1996), in Arnhem, Netherlands ( Sonsbeek 93) the 10th Sydney Biennial in 1996, and the S. R. Guggenheim Museum ( Moving Pictures, 2002). She has worked with the choreographers Susan Hadley ( Caught in the Middle, 1986), Meg Stuart ( Appetite, 1998) and Meredith Monk ( Mercy, 2001). Her work features in numerous museum collections, in particular at the Carnegie Museum (Pittsburgh), the Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Whitney Museum (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Miami Art Museum, and the Tate Gallery (London).

Exhibition curator: Waltraud Forelli-Wallach
Waltraud Forelli was born in Austria in 1964. She has worked in New York, Vienna and Dsseldorf for Heike Curtze Gallery and ran Karsten Greve Gallery from 1994 to 2001. She now works freelance, staging exhibitions with Ann Hamilton, Rebecca Horn, Jean-Marc Bustamante and Arnulf Rainer.
_______

Related events

Saturday February 19th at 5.30pm, the artist will talk about her work (in English).
(reservations only).

Sunday February 20th at 11.30am, the artist will present the exhibition to the public (reservations only).

Saturday March 19th at 20.30pm (time to be confirmed) concert by Les Cris de Paris, choirmaster Geoffroy Jourdain.

Thursdays at 7pm (dates will be published on the foundation's website), conferences by different artists as part of the foundation's partnership with Paris X-Nanterre University

Saturdays and Sundays at 4pm (beginning February 26th) free guided tours of the exhibition.
_______

La maison rouge is a private non-profit contemporary art foundation, opened in June 2004. Its mission is to promote contemporary creation through a programme of temporary exhibitions, staged by independent curators.

The foundation shows private collections of contemporary art, alternating with thematic and solo exhibitions.

Following two exhibitions exploring the theme of the private collection, "L'intime, behind closed doors, the private world of the collector" and "Central Station, the Harald Falckenberg collection", la maison rouge invites the American artist Ann Hamilton to engage its space.

La maison rouge was created on the initiative of Antoine de Galbert, an art collector and active figure on the French art scene. While Antoine de Galbert's own collection is not shown, the entire project is fashioned by his personality and outlook as a collector.
The building, facing the Port de l'Arsenal in Paris' Bastille district, extends over 2,000 square metres on the site of a former photoengraving equipment factory. This space has been divided into four exhibition areas surrounding a house, the maison rouge ("red house") from which the foundation takes its name.
This choice of name reflects Antoine de Galbert's determination to offer a pleasant and relaxed venue where visitors can take in an exhibition or a conference, enjoy a drink and browse at the bookstore.

This exhibition is supported by tant donns, the French-American Fund for Contemporary Art, a FACSEA programme.

public preview Thursday February 17th 2005 6pm 9pm
press preview Thursday February 17th 2005 2pm 5pm
in the artist's presence

press relations
Claudine Colin Communication
5, rue Barbette 75003 Paris
Nathalie Marchal
t : +33 (0)1 42 72 60 01 f : +33 (0)1 42 72 50 23

la maison rouge
fondation antoine de galbert
10 bd de la bastille 75012 Paris

getting there
metro stations: Quai de la Rape (line 5) or Bastille (lines 1, 5 or 8)
RER station: Gare de Lyon bus n 20, 29 or 91

accessibility
the exhibition areas are accessible to disabled visitors and people with restricted mobility.

opening days and times Wednesday to Sunday 11am to 7pm late-night Thursday until 9pm closed December 25th, January 1st and May 1st

admission
full price: 6.50 concessions: 4.50 (13-18 years, students, full-time artists, and over-60s). free: under-13s, the unemployed, companions of disabled visitors, members of ICOM and les Amis de la maison rouge. annual pass full price: 22 concessions: 14 free and unlimited admission to the exhibitions. free or reduced rate admission to related events.

stampa

permanent link