Tag Archives: Galerie Perrotin

Paris: Jean-Michel Othoniel ‘Oracles’

March 17, 2019 butterfly

Galerie Perrotin presents a new solo show of French contemporary artist Jean-Michel Othoniel in Paris, following several important personal exhibitions in Canada, USA and France in 2018.

Jean-Michel Othoniel’s enchanting aesthetics revolves around the notion of emotional geometry. Using the repetition of modular elements such as bricks or his signature beads, which are his most recurring motif, he creates exquisite jewelry-like sculptures whose relationship to human scale ranges from intimacy to monumentality

The exhibition entitled ‘Oracles’ brings together fifteen minimalistic, enigmatic sculptures made of glass or metal bricks, the artist has systematized the use of a module that entered his work in 2009, after a journey to India. On the road from Delhi to Firozabad, a city with an age-old glassmaking tradition, he was struck by the stacks of bricks accumulated in the hope of building a house and by the countless altars covered in offerings and multicoloured necklaces. Since then, he has called on the knowledge of Indian glassblowers to blow blue, amber, yellow and grey glass bricks.

Monumental yet delicate, the sculptural installations allow the viewers to inhabit his world through reflection and motion.

Jean Michel Othoniel - Oracles

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Jean Michel Othoniel – Oracles
Until 8 June 2019
Galerie Perrotin, Paris

Paris, Shows

Paris: Lee Bae ‘ Black Mapping’

May 15, 2018 butterfly

Perrotin Gallery in Paris is currently showing “Black Mapping” by Korean contemporary artist Lee Bae and looks back to the creative period of Lee Bae marked by the work of charcoal, in the form of paintings, sculptures and installations.

Since the early 2000’s Lee Bae is best known for his acrylic paintings associating a thousand variations of black and creamy white. Perrotin Gallery has chosen to highlight a lesser known creative aspect from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, which focused on the use of charcoal.

Lee Bae’s charcoal achievements are a crucial moment in the Korean artist’s career when he arrived in Paris in 1990, and the discovery of this new material is a turning point in his practice.

The choice of charcoal is due to several reasons: references to the China ink and calligraphy, but is also deeply rooted in the Korean tradition and reminded him of its origins.

Charcoal would allow Lee Bae to combine and align the two subjects that had always motivated him: a reflection on the material and a quest for blackness. In other words, on one hand the material in itself, for its sculptural qualities, and on the other hand, the material as a means of achieving tonality.

The installations of the Fire series are juxtaposed elements of raw material, burned and glued on canvas. Working the surface and revealing shadows, gradients and highlights, charcoal is a powerful creative element both literally and figuratively.

Check a video by Simone Hoffman for Arte Metropolis that looks behind the scenes.

Lee Bae – Black Mapping
Until 26 May 2018
Galerie Perrotin
76 rue de Turenne
75003 Paris

Paris, Shows

Paris: Xu Zhen – Civilization Iteration @Galerie Perrotin

July 28, 2017 butterfly

‘Civilization Iteration’ is the first solo exhibition of Chinese artist Xu Zhen at Galerie Perrotin in Paris, showcasing Xu’s important series of works since 2013 when he started a brand in his own name. Iteration refers to the way of achieving a desired result through repeated feedback. The exhibited series shows how an artist, amidst increasing globalization and networking of art, can approach the future of art with his own formula.

As early as 2001, Xu participated in the 49th Venice Biennale, then the youngest Chinese artist to exhibit works at this international art event. Having made a name at 20 as an artist, he has since created a large number of works based on his own consciousness. In 2009 he decided to establish the art creation enterprise MadeIn Company in Shanghai. Since then his works have been produced in a corporate fashion and his “artist” identity has been plunged into the center of controversy. Meanwhile, Xu’s creative focus has begun to shift to the relationship between art and business.

From the “individual artist period” when he concerned himself with the consciousness of identity, to “Xu Zhen brand”, Xu has moved on to repeatedly examine the current culture and transition as a reflection of the tremendous changes in human history over the past decades. Admittedly, the extension of consciousness unleashed by the Internet has eliminated temporal and spatial disparity. Yet, in the process, cultural learning in the traditional sense has been destroyed by information overload, giving way to recurrent cultural stagnation and dysfunctional standards. The information highway makes one feel unreal, and boundaries between meaning, values and reality gradually blur. In the course of time, after endless destruction and reconstruction, the boundless reformulations and iteration are opening up a new paradigm for civilization in the present.

The Rmn – Grand Palais moulding workshop is a little-known source of inspiration and a production workshop for artists searching for the classical canons (Xu Zhen today, Klein 50 years ago, Picasso and Dali 70 years ago, Rodin a century ago, etc.). After the Winged “Victory of Samothrace” inverted on the head of Buddha exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in winter 2015-16, the Perrotin gallery is currently presenting several works by Xu Zhen, two of which include reproductions from the Rmn – Grand Palais moulding workshop: “Aphrodite Holding Her Drapery” and “Belvedere Torso” from the “Eternity” series.

XU Zhen – Civilization Iteration
Galerie Perrotin
Until 29 July
76 rue de Turenne 75003 Paris

Paris, Shows, Uncategorized

Paris: Aya Takano – The Jelly Civilization Chronicle

May 26, 2017 butterfly

Japanese painter, illustrator, sci-fi writer and manga artist Aya Takano, is exhibiting ‘The Jelly Civilization Chronicle’, a selection of 26 paintings and several drawings on celluloid, all preparatory studies for a 186-page manga, unveiled in its entirety at Galerie Perrotin in Paris.
Aya Takano belongs to the Superflat movement and Kaikai Kiki, the artistic production studio created in 2001 by Takashi Murakami. Inspired by all art forms, from erotic stamps of the Edo Period to impressionism, from Osamu Tezuka to Gustav Klimt, the artist has built a universe all her own. Her mythology has constructed itself little by little, through her creations and visions of the unknown.

The 2011 tsunami that struck the north eastern coasts of Japan and led to the nuclear accident of Fukushima was a real wake-up call for the artist and this catastrophe deeply influenced her work. Preferring oil paint, which is more natural, to acrylic paint, for example, Aya Takano seems to pursue a new artistic quest, both humble and spiritual, influenced by a unique interest in science and guided by an absolute respect for nature and human life.

Aya Takano has a special gift for storytelling, which she expands and enriches from one image to the next. She has created a 186-page manga entitled The Jelly Civilization Chronicle, exhibited in its entirety at the Galerie Perrotin, in English. After taking form in her imagination, the work came to life in very colourful preparatory oil paintings and drawings on celluloid. We find all the themes and obsessions of the artist from the beginning of her career, 20 years ago: self-discovery, feminine beauty, science fiction, the fight between light and shadow and the pursuit of an immaterial ideal, freed from all restraints of gravity.

The manga stages the adventures of Naki and Minaka in a journey from the “Machine Civilization” to the “Jelly Civilization”. In a back-and-forth voyage between eras and spaces, the two characters meet in the sky and travel to the outer edges of the universe via unexplored places or planets with unknown magical powers…

Initially dressed in emblematic high school uniforms, they are in turns nude or swathed in traditional kimonos or dreamlike clothing made of a mysterious jelly, a living organism that feeds off of water and oxygen. Surrounded by fabulous creatures, they are also accompanied by their ancestors, represented in the form of animals. They learn about the stars, meet a queen in an owl mask and encounter beings with star-tattoœd skin.
On the ruins of a nuclear reactor, after numerous trials and metamorphoses, the herœs return to the peaceful society they originally came from. This “Jelly Civilization” combines tradition, memory and eternity: “Memories of all the people wearing ‘jelly’, memories of all the ‘jelly’, memories of what is happening now, of what might happen…”
The result is the fruit of an imagination that feeds itself, full of every possibility of illusion, like an ideal space on the border of dreams and desires. “I think it is omnipresent inside ourselves and everywhere,” explains Aya Takano. The Jelly Civilization Chronicle represented a real challenge for the artist, who devoted herself to telling the recent story of Japan, while crystallizing within it her worries and obsessions as she never had before: it took an entire year to develop this original and ambitious work, presented and distributed first time in Paris, at the Galerie Perrotin.

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Aya Takano
The Jelly civilization
Galerie Perrotin, Paris

Paris, Shows

Paris: G I R L @ Perrotin

June 25, 2014 butterfly

After initially meeting up in Miami in 2007, multi-talented musician/designer Pharrell Williams and French gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin decided to continue their artistic collaboration seven years later with an exhibition curated especially for Galerie Perrotin’s new space, the Salle de Bal in Paris.

Set in a former ballroom at the Hôtel du Grand Veneur, a 17th century Hôtel
Particulier in the Marais area of Paris, “G I R L” is a contemporary art exhibition, which brings together 48 artworks – including 12 specially produced works. The show pays tribute to femininity through the vision of 37 artists / including 18 women.

G I R L - Perrotin Paris

Pharrell says, “Just like my album [G I R L], what I tried to do is offer many different facets of my appreciation for women…I love women everywhere. I make no apologies for the wide spectrum of affinity for women.”

Participating artists include: Marina Abramovic & Ulay, Chiho Aoshima, Daniel Arsham, Valérie Belin, Sophie Calle, Johan Creten, Tracey Emin, Daniel Firman, Gelitin, Guerrilla Girls, Laurent Grasso, Gregor Hildebrandt, JR, Alex Katz, KAWS, Bharti Kher, Klara Kristalova, Mr., Guy Limone, Annette Messager, Ryan McGinley, Takashi Murakami, Prune Nourry, Yoko Ono, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Rob Pruitt, Paola Pivi, Terry Richardson, Germaine Richier, Cindy Sherman, Taryn Simon, Mickalene Thomas, Aya Takano, Agnès Thurnauer, Xavier Veilhan, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann…
G I R L - Perrotin Paris

Some artists have also decided to illustrate Pharrell in their artwork like Takashi Murakami. Daniel Arsham’s The Future Pharrell features a glass and resin life-size statue while Laurent Grasso painted Pharrell as Napoleon on a horse before a colossal statue of an Egyptian queen. The Japanese artist Mr. and the American artist Rob Pruitt have created, respectively, a painting of Pharrell with the word “GIRLS” on it, and a sofa, Studio Loveseat, which depicts Pharrell’s image over the years.

G I R L - Perrotin Paris