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21/2/2005

Mille et trois plateaux

Mamco, Geneve

Second Episode: Conversations

Conversations, second episode of Mamco's Mille et trois plateaux cycle of exhibitions, presents eight new monographies: Defraoui, Vidya Gastaldon, Michel Grillet, Jean Mohr, Mike Nelson, Karim Noureldin, Koka Ramishvili and Sophie Ristelhueber.

To accommodate Fabrice Gygi's exhibition last Fall, the first floor of the museum was entirely overhauled; British artist Mike Nelson (1967, Loughborough) invested this 1000-square meter area to erect a hill, an evocation of Jules Vernes' Mysterious Island. Using the floor's former plywood walls, he covered them with concrete-based material coupled with a structure of mirrors. Mike Nelson built his installation around the main axis of the museum and, besides walking round the island, the visitor is invited to discover, on entering a side tunnel, the architectural configuration and environment created by the artist. For over ten years now, Mike Nelson has expressed himself through sizeable constructions sprinkled with flea market objects, thereby altering the notion of space, entertaining a certain confusion between the container and the contents, the studio and the museum, the art collection and the motley accumulation of odd pieces. Through powerful references and suggestions, Mike Nelson's installations are offering the visitors the draft of a story they are to write themselves.

When in 1979 Silvie (St Gallen, 1935) and Chérif Defraoui (Geneva, 1932-1994) realized their Carthographie des contrées à venir (Cartography of lands to come), they cut a new path into the art of video, that of a stage setting, as an invitation to come into the installation. From 1975 on, they have been working together on several creations which they then included in their artistic project Archives du futur, "a journey through History and stories". Video and photography constitute the primary fabric of their production, focusing primarily on the "perception and elaboration of possible significations within the frame of visual and auditory inputs often in parallel." The show is produced in partnership with the Kunstverein St. Gallen Kunstmuseum and the Salonika Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art. A catalogue is available.

Karim Noureldin (Zurich, 1967) began some ten years ago to develop an opus based exclusively on drawing technique. He explains that, being impatient by nature, he choose this medium motivated as he was by the necessity to attain an immediate result, making the most of a cheap and easily available support. Trusting his intuition, working in a bicolor sketch-like style, using ruler and pencil, he creates imaginary, multifaceted, three-dimensional effects structures. In spite of an apparent formal connection, he refutes all links with constructivist expressions. He assembles his sketches and small drawings in groups of hundreds, works on outsized sheets of paper or creates in-situ mural drawings, as at the Winterthur Kunstmuseum in 2004. Shown on the Plateau des Sculptures on the third floor of Mamco, Zigzag is a blue and white geometric axis that seems to interfere with one's perception of the perspective.

From the beginning of his career Michel Grillet (Geneva, 1956) has been working meticulously towards the confines offered by both his subjects and his chosen medium : horizon, mountain peaks, starry skies, watercolors. For his first exhibition in a French-speaking Switzerland institution, he presents some forty starry nights painted on gouache pastilles. Pressed on the verge of painting, they are visions of interiorized landscapes issued from the artist's intimate recollections. Their original wrappings, rounded white plastic supports, officiate as frames that provide the paintings with a screen-like effect, or the appearance of a window that opens towards the infinite.

Vidya Gastaldon, a young French artist living in Geneva, was born in Besançon in 1974. Her work delves in a strange world composed of imaginary landscapes she expresses through videos, drawings or installations using wool, pearls and threads. A collection of one hundred drawings showing an apparent naïveté plus a recent video summon ambivalent feelings, between anxiety and euphoria, between dream and reality.

In a mix of videos, cartoons, drawings, photography and sound, Koka Ramishvili (Tbilissi, Georgia, 1956) was featured at Mamco in 2003 with his video "Drawing Lesson". He now presents what he describes as an "Audiovisual Sculpture". Projected on a transparent screen, this work develops the notion of "the representation of an image as an optical and psychological platform for the present". Koka Ramishvili has been living in Geneva for the past years.

Supported by the Geneva Cultural Affairs Department, the photographer Jean Mohr (Geneva, 1925) presents a project included in the Manifeste pour une paix juste et durable au Moyen-Orient (Manifesto for a J u s t and Lasting Peace in the Near East). Through his work, he follows and illustrates, peace demonstrations organized by the Manifeste since 2002. To colour photographs of a confounding similarity shot in Israel and Palestine, he opposes black-and-white pictures taken during the events the Manifeste organized in Geneva (street march, debate, concert).

In parallel, Mamco is once more hosting the Cabinet des estampes, a section of the Geneva Musées d'art et d'histoire. Sophie Ristelhueber (Paris, 1949) "has, for the past twenty years, set out to demonstrate the disorders caused by major events that afflict various regions", be they of natural or human origin. Both the exhibition and its accompanying publication assemble fifty-four images she brought back from the West Bank between 2003 and 2004, the portray of a country where roads are blocked, or obstructed. These "paysages de la separation" (separation landscapes) are an expression of a conflicting analysis as well as reflecting the inner feelings of an artist who says of herself that she is "at war".

Opening: Tuesday 22 February 2005 from 18:00 to 21:00 Press conference: Tuesday 22 February at 10:00 at Mamco
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Mille et trois plateaux, Second Episode: Conversations

Defraoui, Archives du futur 1975-2004
(with the support of Credit Suisse)

Vidya Gastaldon, Biolovarama, 2001-2005

Michel Grillet, Mémoire de paysage Jean Mohr, Le Manifeste ­ quel manifeste ?
(exhibition proposed by Le Manifeste and the Département des affaires culturelles de la Ville de Genève)

Mike Nelson, STUDIO APPARATUS FOR MAMCO; AN INTERMEDIATE STRUCTURE FOR A MUSEUM.
OR MYSTERIOUS ISLAND.
(with the support of the British Council and the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation)

Karim Noureldin, Zigzag, 2005

Koka Ramishvili, Plates-formes pour événements, 2004
(with the support of the Département de l'Instruction publique du Canton de Genève and the Fonds cantonal d'art contemporain)Opening: Tuesday 22 February 2005 from 18:00 to 21:00 Press conference: Tuesday 22 February at 10:00 at Mamco

Sophie Ristelhueber, WB
(exhibition proposed by the Cabinet des estampes, MAH, Geneva)
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Conferences (free entrance)

Monday 28 February, 18:30: conference-performance by Simone Forti (with ESBA, Geneva)

Sunday 6 March, Sunday 3 April, Sunday 1 May, 15:00 : free guided tours

Tuesday 8 March, 18:30: commentary by Christian Bernard, Conversations

Tuesday 15 March, 18:30: commentary by Rainer M Mason and Sophie Ristelhueber

Monday 21 March, 18:30: poetry by Jacques Demarcq and Fairy Queen by Olivier Cadiot and Éric Devanthéry (10th week of French and French-speaking world)

Tuesday 19 april, 18:30: commentary by Françoise Ninghetto with Silvie Defraoui

Mardi 26 avril, 18h:30: commentary by Catherine Pavlovic, Mike Nelson
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Publications

Archives du futur 1975-2004, DEFRAOUI
Texts by Konrad Bitterli, Michael Gnehm, Ursula Pia Jauch, Daniel Kurjakovic, Hans Rudolf Reust, Daniel Wilhem and Denys Zacharopoulos ; Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2004, 248 pages, French ­ German. ISBN 3-936711-32-1 ; 78 CHF / 51 euro

Aire, Karim Noureldin Texts by Dieter Schwarz, Max Wechsler, Katharina Holderegger ; prix Manor 2004, co-edition with the Kunstmuseum of Winterthur and Mamco, 2004, 104 pages, 60 pictures, English ­ German ; 40 CHF / 26,50 euro

WB (West Bank), Sophie Ristelhueber Ed. Thames & Hudson, 54 photos, 112 pages, 22 euro

Press contact: Alicia Treppoz-Vielle, tél. +41 22 320 61 22

Mamco, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 10 rue des Vieux Grenadiers, CH-1205 Geneva
Open Tuesday-Friday 12:00-18:00, Saturday-Sunday 11:00-18:00; closed Mondays and Friday 25 March 2005

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