Category Archives: Paris

Paris: Chiharu Shiota ‘Destination’ @Galerie Templon

July 17, 2017 butterfly

Following her eye-catching project at the Bon Marché Rive Gauche in Paris in early 2017, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is returning to both Galerie Daniel Templon‘s spaces with a spectacular site-specific installation and a series of new sculptures.

She has likened her artistic practice with yarn to that of a calligrapher. It’s a fitting parallel: Chiharu Shiota trained in painting before gravitating toward three-dimensionality. Having studied in Braunschweig, Germany, under Marina Abramović, she moved to Berlin in 1997 where she lives today. Her immersive environments and intricately wrought objects, enigmatic yet deeply physical, are the results of painstaking labor.

Her protean artistic practice explores the notions of the body, temporality, movement, memory and dreams. Her site-specific installations are often the theatre for performances designed by the artist to engage mentally and physically with viewers.

‘Destination 2017’, is a site-specific, room-engulfing labyrinth that has the sprawl of an uncontrollable fungus, a haywire cat’s cradle, or a webbed cathedral in red. Like her installation The Key in the Hand, 2015—made from second-hand keys ensnarled in massive amounts of scarlet string for the Japan pavilion at the Fifty-Sixth Venice Biennale—the work engages directly with the volume of its surroundings.

She explains: “I have been using boats since my exhibition at the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015; I wanted to create one oversized boat representing the topics I have touched on in my most recent works. Ships carry people and time. They feature a defined direction, with no other choice but to keep moving forward. Though we may not know where we are heading, we can never stop. Life is a journey of uncertainty and wonder, and the boats symbolize the bearers of our dreams and hopes.”

A huge 5-metre boat, the frame of its hull resembling a human skeleton, floats in a sea of red yarn. Following on from this environment, the Skins painting are depicting ambiguous yet poetic representations of the body, its surface, its networks of connections.

A series of yarn sculptures envelops various objects, such as a chair and loose papers floating in space, creating an ensemble that raises the metaphysical questions that face us as humans, the difficulty we have understanding the world, and the complex relations that link us.
‘During humanity’s early years, death used to be connected to human life’s destination. It could be easier to find an answer to the question of our purpose in life. We were more aware of the creative process and the different steps along the way. Nowadays, we build and create on a massive scale, including things we don’t need, with no clear goal in sight, at a vertiginous speed…’

View the full set of pics here

To mark Le Havre’s 500-year celebration, from May 27 to October 8, 2017, Chiharu Shiota will be presenting Accumulation of Power, a site-specific installation at the famous St. Joseph Church in Le Havre designed by architect Auguste Perret.

Chiharu Shiota – Destination 2017
Until July 22
Galerie Daniel Templon
30 rue Beaubourg, Paris

Paris, Shows, Street

Paris: Ludo ‘I’ve been missing you’ Solo Show

June 30, 2017 butterfly

French artist Ludo is returning to Paris after five years with a new solo show namely titled ‘I’ve been missing you’ at Magda Danysz Gallery.

After extensive travelling, creating installations in New York, monumental walls throughout the world and institutional projects, like at the Power Station of Art Museum in Shanghai, Ludo invites us for a journey through his multi-faceted works, whether photographs, paintings, drawings or sculptures.

In this exhibition LUDO also presents an installation made up of an army of fireflies whose phosphorescent light dazzles and envelops while letting emerge a certain question about the relation of man to technology. Hybrid creatures emerge from the artist’s imagination with botanical precision using a colour palette ranging from grey to his signature green.

The images of LUDO explore the environment, the future, the space, the human. His biotechnological creations come to colonize the three levels of the gallery and plunge us into a chimerical universe where we find the passions and multiple inspirations of the artist.

In parallel to the show, wandering through the streets of Paris in the 20th and 11th district, visitors can discover some of the artist’s latest creations, from a snake to a ‘BeeLice’ and a Grim Reaper.

View full set of pics here

Ludo – I’ve been missing you
Until 29 July 2017
Magda Danysz Gallery,
Rue Amelot, Paris

Paris, Shows

Paris: Tristan Eaton ‘Uprise’ Solo Show

June 26, 2017 butterfly

US artist Tristan Eaton who is currently on the front cover of SC Exhibition Magazine is exhibiting in Paris at Galerie Itinerrance. The solo exhibition titled ‘UPRISE’ is a visual history of protest and resistance. A look back on human history reveals time and again how the powerless have risen to topple the powerful and how the little man can vanquish tyrants with peaceful protest and the power of ideas. This exhibition is a reminder of that awesome power, a reminder that protest and resistance is a human trait and a human right.

Tristan Eaton mentions:
‘UPRISE’ is a visual history of protest and resistance. As an artist, I am compelled to paint what consumes me. In the age of Donald Trump, rising racism and xenophobia, corporate greed and blatant human rights violations across the globe, I am consumed by the desire for change. I am consumed by hope for a better world and a need to throw out of power those who don’t deserve it. As we all know, history will repeat itself. A look back on human history reveals time and again how the powerless have risen to topple the powerful and how the little man can vanquish tyrants with peaceful protest and the power of ideas. This exhibition is a reminder of that awesome power, a reminder that protest and resistance is a human trait and a human right. Wether it’s Martin Luther King Jr. at Selma, an anonymous man in Tiananmen Square or a Palestinian child with a sling shot, change always comes at a price and with much endurance. In these works, I hope to honor those brave leaders of the past, while emboldening the freedom fighters of our future.

Many international artists attended the opening like Iranian female artist Golnaz Behrouznia, Ben Eine (UK) and C215 (FR) to name a few.

In parallel visitors can wander in the streets of the 13th District enjoy a series of murals painted by Tristan Eaton like a water tower next to the nearby hospital.

UPRISE by Tristan Eaton
Until 8 July 2017,
Galerie Itinerrance
4 Boulevard du Général d’Armée Jean Simon
75013 Paris

Paris, Shows

Paris: Belin ‘Post Neo Cubism’ Solo Show

June 19, 2017 butterfly

Having exhibited in Europe, US, Canada and Mexico, Spanish artist Miguel Ángel Belinchón aka Belin is currently showing his first Parisian Solo Show called ‘Post Neo Cubism’, curated by Nicolas Couturieux.

Self-taught artist Belin has grown internationally as one of the leading hyper-realistic graffiti artists. For over the past 15 years, Belin’s mastering technique of the spraypaint has been his signature style, free hand flowing directly from the realism of his imagination without the use of preparatory stencils, with the precision of lines and proportions so crucial in hyperrealism.

A visit to Málaga in 2016, home town of Spanish master, Pablo Picasso, has been decisive in his career and triggered a new artistic style for the artist: Post – Neo Cubism, a balance between cubism and realism.
Belin started to deconstruct his hyperrealist style and break the mould of reality, free from forms and rules, with the representation of multiplied view angles, mixing geometrical elements, patterns and textures, along with vibrant colours to create dynamic portraits, fusing hyperrealism with abstraction. People’s faces and bodies, disassembled and then reassembled, multiply their human nature to illustrate all the nuances and differences of expressions and feelings.

Using spray cans, oil painting and pencil, these dynamic portraits have such accurate expressive details of the faces, the wrinkles, the eyes, ears, noses, and mouths, that they seem incredibly ‘alive’.

Through twenty canvasses and ten pencil drawings, the current exhibition features icons and persons who captured Belin’s life as well as symbols from France to Andalucia. Family members and friends are illustrated as well as a deconstructed self portrait. Belins pays also homage to the great masters with portraits of Pablo Picasso, Dali, Keith Haring to Frida Kahlo and female icons like Mona Lisa.

Many artists turned up to celebrate the opening with Belin such as Ogre, Thomas Canto and Miss Van to name a few.

In parallel to the exhibition, Belin is also releasing a puzzle version of his ‘Marion’ painting and a show poster.

View the full set of pics here

Belin – Post Neo Cubism
Until 25 June
24 Rue Beaubourg
Paris

Paris

Paris: Brusk ‘ In Memoriam’ Solo Show @Galerie Strouk

June 11, 2017 butterfly

Famous for his large scale multicoloured murals on his own or with his crew, the Da Mental Vaporz, French street artist Brusk, is back to Paris for a new solo show ‘In Memoriam’ at Galerie Laurent Strouk. It is his second solo show ( see Ad Vitam Eternam coverage here) in Paris.

The prestigious front sign ‘Matignon’ has been cheekily striked through with black spray paint while highlighting the letters ART in the Gallery name.

Combining a Fine Arts background with more than twenty years of graffiti, Brusk’s gestural painting is instantly recognizable. The artist creates questions, variations, wanderings through a poetic fantasy, mastering his signature multicoloured dripping effects to create an abstract-figurative lyrical mix where all the misery of the world is transformed by the force and tension of bodies and forms. For the artist, the drippings no longer define a style effect but rather a technique in its own right, Brusk successfully tames it to create movement, relief, lightness and fluidity.

The themes touched upon by the artist resonate with the formal duality mentioned: opposing love to death, urbanity to animals, the nobility of creation to the triviality of news.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

More recently, Brusk has started experimenting with volume and created two sculptures-installations for the exhibition, transferring his vision into sculpture.

References to his graffiti roots appear in numerous artworks from the high speed train ‘TG Vaporz’ to ‘Hors les Murs’ ripped building.

Often tainted with a touch of humour, the artworks sometimes reveals a more acerbic and more committed criticism. Brusk is also politically engaged and aim to raise awareness about societal issues such as global warming, pollution and the migrant crisis.

At the core of the exhibition, a series dedicated to Refugees illustrates the often unfair fate of these populations in Europe. A sculpture represents at totem of refugees stacked on paper boat, while poignant sound recordings from migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea play in the background ( these were recorded by SOS Mediterranee, an association rescuing migrants across the Mediterranean Sea). Deeply affected by the current situation, part of the proceeds of the artworks in the ‘Salle des Refugies’ will go to support SOS Mediterranee.