Les Tristes. For their first exhibition at Invisible-Exports, Lucas Ajemian and Julien Bismuth are staging a dialogue of or out of sorts. By means of a series of objects, performances, the filming of scenes for a long-standing film project, and a publication, they will engage in an exchange across a frail and blurred divide of authorship.
Collaboration is a way of working. It is also a genre, founded on an idea or ideal of authorship.
Dialogue, on the other hand, is a form of interaction, one that has its own ethos and discipline of
engagement, in which each protagonist is constantly asked to shift between listening and speaking,
proposing and understanding, deciding and complying.
For their first exhibition at Invisible-Exports, Lucas Ajemian and Julien Bismuth are staging a dialogue of
or out of sorts. By means of a series of objects, performances, the filming of scenes for a long-standing
film project, and a publication, they will engage in an exchange across a frail and blurred divide of
authorship. The materials used for this exhibition will be newspaper, glue, water, wire mesh, a mime,
newsprint and ink, a printing press, computers and cell phones, and other, miscellaneous and as of yet
more or less unknown items. Scenes for the “Les Tristes” film will be staged and shot every week at or
within proximity to the gallery. Anyone interested in participating or auditioning for these scenes may
contact the gallery for dates and times.
The exhibition ventures to address such topics as: (a.) the immateriality of concepts as an ideal rendered
unattainable by the materiality of language, (b.) the ideal of furniture as objects rendered immaterial by
our familiar and unconscious relation to them, (c.) the material and yet seemingly immaterial nature of
the filmic illusion, (d.) the fallacy of commerce as an end to a means rather than a means to an end, (e.)
the irascibility of the avant-gardes, (f.) the difficulty of breaking down language into analyzable units,
(g.) the morning papers, (h.) distraction, (i.) manholes, and - perhaps most importantly (j.) the
consequences of having an absence of motives being counteracted by a plenitude of impulses.
Lucas Ajemian (1975) holds an MFA from University of Illinois at Chicago. He has had solo exhibitions at
Daniel Hug Gallery, Los Angeles; Galerie Parisa Kind, Frankfurt; Kirkhoff, Copenhagen; Moderna Museet,
Stockholm; and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times,
and Flash Art.
Julien Bismuth (1972) holds an MA from Goldsmith’s College, London and is a PhD candidate in literature
at Princeton University. He has had solo exhibitions at the Box, Los Angeles; Layr Wuestenhagen
Contemporary, Vienna; Institut d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France; Galerie Parisa Kind, Frankfurt; and
Galerie Georges-Phillipe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris. His work has been reviewed in the New Yorker, The
New York Times, and Flash Art.
Lucas Ajemian and Julien Bismuth have collaborated on a series of projects since 2005. They have
exhibited together at the Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris (2008); Galerie Parisa Kind,
Frankfurt (2006), the Orange County Museum, Newport Beach, CA (2008) and Foxy Productions, New York
(2008).
Opening Friday, February 26, 6-8pm
INVISIBLE-EXPORTS
Lower East Side, at 14A Orchard Street
hours: Wednesday through Sunday, 11-6:30pm,
and by appointment