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27/6/2009

Carlos Garaicoa

Castello di Blandy-Les-Tours, Blandy-Les-Tours

Blandy Art Tour(s)

For every new edition of contemporary art launched in partnership between the Seine-et-Marne General Council and Galleria Continua at the Château de Blandy-Les-Tours, Blandy Art Tour(s) henceforth proposes a contemporary art exhibition within its walls each summer. For the first, in 2008, Pascale Marthine Tayou took over the château with her Matiti Elobi exhibition which was seen by more than 13 000 visitors.

From a distance, with its five towers and its dungeon, dominating the whole valley in the heart of the green Brie countryside, the silhouette of Blandy-Les-Tours, a striking example of a fortified castle from the Middle Ages, henceforth brandishes each year its new arms in the colours of the most emergent creation each year. Art testifies here, more than ever, the possibilities of exchange and synergy of which it is a messenger. It is in this sense that the Château de Blandy-les-Tours, property of the General Council, regularly welcomes artistic performances with the desire to make art accessible to everyone.

For the second edition, the guest artist is Carlos Garaicoa (born in 1967 in Havana). Today he is one of the leading Cuban artists occupying the international scene. In fact, Carlos Garaicoa has been recognized internationally since his participation at the Documenta 11 in Germany, and his invitation to the Johannesburg Biennial (1995), the Sao Paulo Biennial (1998), the Gwangju Biennial and to several Havana Biennials, as well as to the first Yokohama Triennial in Japan and to the Venice Biennale in 2005. His most notable exhibitions were at the M.O.M.A in New York, the itinerant shows at the M.O.C.A (Los Angeles)-I.C.A (Philadelphia)-R.O.M (Toronto), the M.E.P in Paris, Palazzo delle Papesse (Siena), and more recently Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte). At Blandy-Les-Tours, Carlos Garaicoa proposes an investigation of the place by blending his work on the town with the microcosm of the Château and by the same token, reinterprets architectural utopia.

Since the beginning of the 1990’s, Carlos Garaicoa has questioned the urban reality of ancient Havana, it obsolescence and poetry. The city, formerly recognised for its grandeur and beauty, has progressively deteriorated into ruin. Carlos Garaicoa, a child of the revolution, has seen Havana go from a state of magnificence, to a loss of its history which is beyond repair. One by one, big and small, historically important or anonymous, the buildings have succumbed to the weight of time. Adopting his birth town as a source of inspiration and as a laboratory, Carlos Garaicoa has developed a model in which Havana is a metaphor for human existence. The notion of Utopia is at the heart of his work: building parallels between the Havana of today and the imaginary island described by Sir Thomas Moore in Utopia (1516), where the citizens enjoy a perfect political and social lifestyle. Carlos Garaicoa thus shows us that architecture is a force capable of altering the course of history. Modernism, in its capacity as a catalyst for social change, here appears like a failure and questions the idea of the fall of 20th century utopia.

For Carlos Garaicoa, artistic intervention reinvents the town and finds a new meaning for it. His films, drawings, models, sculptures, installations and photographic and architectural interventions physically change urban make-up and preserve, with the same bias, the souvenir of what was lost under the socialist revolution. The town is real, but also dreamt up, idealised, uncensored; a fantasised and desired utopia. He speaks of the forgotten city and that which is remembered, the private and public town, its past, present and future. Carlos Garaicoa uses fragments of the town, its rooms and ruins, showing urban planning which evolves throughout tragic and sometimes happy history. Such urban archaeology: his work questions the ‘unconsciousness’ of the contemporary town. Construction, destruction and reconstruction are directly connected to social and cultural politics, the workforce and close friends. The metropolis is seen like a transit zone, of meeting and exchange where periods meet.

The work of Carlos Garaicoa is anecdotal, narrative, on the same level as a novel. Its language is a kind of multi- layered and polyphonic text, full of critical, poetic and nostalgic narrative. Thus, on the same level as a surgeon, the artist intervenes on the body of the town, the buildings, streets, fragments and ruins are looked at like limbs, organs, veins, arteries… The artist’s work bears witness to the town’s fragility and its urbanisation plans: everything can go up in smoke in just one second in the era of violent change, which makes a place paradise one day and hell the next…

Image: 2009, 3 light boxes, wood table, hand cut adhesive tapes on cutting mat, paper, 120 x 560 x 80 cm

Galleria Continua
Italia - Via del Castello 11, 53037 San Gimignano (SI), ph. +39 0577 943134, sangimignano@galleriacontinua.com
China - Dashanzi 798 #8503, 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang Dst., 100015 Beijing, ph. +86 10 59789505, beijing@galleriacontinua.com.cn
France - 46 rue de la Ferté Gaucher 77169 Boissy-le-Châtel, ph. +33 (0)1 64 203950, lemoulin@galleriacontinua.com
http://www.galleriacontinua.com

Sunday 28th June, from 1pm to 6pm: free private-viewing

Sunday 28th June, a shuttle-bus is at your disposition from Paris, Place du Châtelet at 11.30 am. Return leaves Blandy at 4.30 pm (anticipated arrival in Paris at 5.30 pm).
Only on reservation: 01 60 59 17 80, enrol before Wednesday 24th June (according to availability).
Carlos Garaicoa Exhibition La Mala Semilla from 28th June to 20th September at the Château de Blandy-Les-Tours.
Booklet published in July.

Château de Blandy-Les-Tours
77115 Blandy-Les-Tours
The Château de Blandy is open every day except Tuesday from 10 am to 12.30 midday and from 1.30 pm to 6 pm.
Directions:
• From Paris: join the A5 towards Provins, exit n°16 Châtillon-la-Borde, and then follow the D47.
• From Melun: take the D408 then follow the D47, or the N36 then the D215, via Vaux-le-Vicomte.
• From Provins: take the D408 and follow the D47.
Prices:
• Individuals
Full price: 6 €.
Reductions: 4 € for 19 to 25 year olds (inc.) and over 60 years, disabled and their accompanying adult.
Free: children up to the age of 18 (inc.), unemployed, recipients of RSA or CMU.
• Groups
Groups welcomed for guided visits on reservation.
Groups from 15 people: right of entry 5.40 € per person, commentary 4 € per person.

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