Tag Archives: Perrotin

Animal Secrets by Mark Ryden (Perrotin Paris)

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

Perrotin and Kasmin are presenting a jointly organized exhibition of new work by American artist Mark Ryden (b. 1963, US). Running until 30 July, ‘Animal Secrets’ comprises 10 paintings and 12 works on paper that further develop the artist’s series of portraiture, featuring mysterious and mythical creatures created during lockdown.

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

Conceived alongside the artist’s most recent exhibition at Perrotin Tokyo, the resulting gallery of enchanted characters embodies the artist’s meticulously-realized signature blend of archetype, kitsch, and narrative mysticism.

Mark Ryden’s imaginative artistic play manifests itself through deep layers of meanings and connotations: mythology and folklore mingle in this baroque universe as if to better explain the secret order of the universe.

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

His interest in the subject of animals as spiritual entities was first explored in his series. For his exhibition ‘Anima Animals’ in Shanghai gallery, Mark Ryden completed his paintings in early 2020, just as the entire world went into Covid lockdown. During this time of isolation in his Pacific-Northwest studio, Mark Ryden began a new series that further explored his reverence for these animal beings that act as guides through a landscape of the unknown. The figures in these paintings are neither human nor animal, they are spiritual entities that create a bridge between the human and animal worlds in which so much disharmony exists.

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

The artist’s practice is an ode to craftsmanship and refined materiality, from exquisite pictorial imagery to lavishly carved and embellished frames. At the same time, the artist probes into the invisible and secret order of the universe and interprets the life of things that are filled with
spiritual essence.

Mark Ryden explores intimate anxieties and archetypes with a pop surrealist vision. Aesthetics juxtaposed with a certain folkore, taste for the bizarre, his style is distinguished by a remarkable technical mastery, with intricate details and symbols.

Several works in the exhibition are presented as ‘tavolettas,’ a handheld form common in Italy between the 14th and 17th centuries for devotional instruments of consolation.
The Tavoletta series’ composition resembles a full-face representation of Christ and other saints in the tradition of byzantine icons and late medieval portraiture. Animal Secrets - Mark RydenAnimal Secrets - Mark Ryden Animal Secrets - Mark RydenAnimal Secrets - Mark Ryden
A figure rendered in a symmetrical pose in the center of the picture directly looks at the viewer. This time-honored, artistic craftsmanship elevates heavily sentimentalized elements of American tradition and antiquity, collected as though for a cabinet of wonders. The laborintensive canvases deftly rework centuries of art history, combining the grandeur of Spanish and Italian religious painting with the layered richness of Old Master compositions.

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

Ryden’s enigmatic characters dwell in harmony with nature amidst idealized landscapes. His tranquil sceneries evoke the nostalgia of Romantic imagery with a dream of the lost Golden Age from classical antiquity to the present day. The power of this iconography is in its simplicity and balance, where an unavoidable piercing gaze of the mythical entity entices the beholder into a silent conversation. A longing for harmonious coexistence with nature, with each other, and oneself.

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

Animal Secrets - Mark RydenAnimal Secrets - Mark Ryden

The friendly surroundings, pastel colours, fluffy coats, pale children with large melancholy eyes, reveal worrying signs. The perception of the half-unveiled mystery becomes a lyrical invitation to dream. The reminiscences of childhood and the mystical essence of cruel tales constitute the essence of a form of pantheistic spirituality through which, under the brush of the painter, the human being tries to reconcile with nature.

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

Animal Secrets become spiritual guides to connect us with the surrounding world with a sensitive, humanist philosophy.

Animal Secrets - Mark Ryden

Animal Secrets, Mark Ryden, Perrotin Matignon, 2bis avenue Matignon Paris 8.

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Paris: Jean-Michel Othoniel ‘Oracles’

Jean Michel Othoniel - Oracles

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

Jean Michel Othoniel - Oracles

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
Jean Michel Othoniel - OraclesJean Michel Othoniel - Oracles
Jean Michel Othoniel - OraclesJean Michel Othoniel - Oracles Jean Michel Othoniel - OraclesJean Michel Othoniel - OraclesJean Michel Othoniel - OraclesJean Michel Othoniel - OraclesJean Michel Othoniel - Oracles

View the full set of pics here

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

 

Paris: Lee Bae ‘ Black Mapping’

Lee Bae - Black Mapping

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 - Black Mapping

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.

Lee Bae - Black Mapping

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.

Lee Bae - Black MappingLee Bae - Black MappingLee Bae - Black MappingLee Bae - Black Mapping
Lee Bae - Black MappingLee Bae - Black Mapping

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