Two exhibitions
dal 20/6/2007 al 18/8/2007
Segnalato da
20/6/2007
Two exhibitions
IAC - Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne
Laurent Grasso / Magnetic Palace + Joe Scanlan / SoLongSolSoLong
Laurent Grasso / Magnetic Palace + Joe Scanlan / SoLongSolSoLong
curated by Nathalie Ergino
LAURENT GRASSO
Magnetic Palace
The Institut d'art contemporain presents an important solo exhibition of
the work of Laurent Grasso, centred on new projects.
A French artist born in 1972, Laurent Grasso lives and works in Paris. He
has had several solo shows in the past ten years (Visual Art Center,
Cambridge, USA, 2006; Galerie Extraspazio, Rome, De Appel Foundation,
Amsterdam, 2005; Galerie Agnès b., Hong Kong, 2004) and has
participated in numerous joint exhibitions (Le Plateau/Frac Ile-de-France,
Nuit Blanche, Paris, Notre histoire, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Satellite of
love, Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2006; Subréel, [mac] musée
d'art contemporain, Marseille, 2002).
At the Institut d'art contemporain, Laurent Grasso uses the entire
exhibition space as a support for experiments using electromagnetic
phenomena such as the aurora borealis and electric arcs. In most of his
works, Laurent Grasso seeks to create tension between reality and fiction,
between conscious and the unconscious. He makes audiovisual devices with
image projection techniques and different electrical and electronic
materials to fix--in hypnotic mode--perceptive experiences and mental
images. The moving image is used with the artist focusing closely on its
floating status and interferences between external reality and psychic
state, between the sensorial and the irrational.
The artist explores the notion of 'projection' and vision' in all their
dimensions. The cinema and then paranormal phenomena are used as 'means'
in the background; he draws on these domains that escape rational analysis
to create real environmental set-ups. Laurent Grasso thus makes images and
creates atmospheres that question our behaviour and that finally grasp the
invisible or the disturbing strangeness of the world.
JOE SCANLAN
SoLongSolSoLong
After a project completed in 2003 (Do It Yourself Dead On Arrival Pay For
Your Pleasure (reprise)), the Institut d'art contemporain has invited Joe
Scanlan again for a solo show of recent works.
Born in 1961 in Stoutsville (Ohio, USA) and a graduate of the Art
Institute of Chicago (1985), Joe Scanlan lives and works in New York. An
artist with an international reputation, Joe Scanlan has had many solo
exhibitions (Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris, 2007; Galerie Micheline
Szwajcer, Antwerp, 2005; IKON Gallery, Birmingham, Van Abbemuseum,
Eindhoven, 2003; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1998) and group
shows (Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, 2007; Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern,
Mudam, Luxembourg, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2006;
Baltic Art Center, Vilnius, 2005).
The exhibition designed by the artist for the Institut d'art contemporain
is a specific project paying a tribute to Sol LeWitt after the death of
this great exponent of minimal art. Joe Scanlan uses his own vocabulary to
address the relation between his work and Sol LeWitt and minimalism.
Joe Scanlan became known in the 1990s via his very special appropriation
of conceptual art. Preoccupied by the production of objects that seem to
be related to everyday life and by affirming a micro-economy--by way of
recycling, or do-it-yourself and crafts--he aims at creative subjectivity
that can gain a position in the capitalist economic universe. In addition
to the fact that it combines functionality and plastic specificity, his
DIY aesthetics favours objects that are mobile, adaptable or even
reversible according to context and use.
The artist's research in recent years seen in sculptures and drawings
centred on certain seasonal processes--such as the formation of snowflakes
(Snowflake drawings) and reconstituted forsythia--reveal his constant
reflection on transient and ephemeral states. This poetic dimension is
tending to gain increasing importance in Joe Scanlan's work and is always
combined with a notion of critical spirit and independence.
Image: Joe Scanlan
Institut d'art contemporain
11 rue Docteur Dolard - Villeurbanne