“More” at Air de Paris

Artists: Leonor Antunes, Noah Barker, Sadie Benning, François Curlet, Stéphane Dafflon, Brice Dellsperger, Guy de Cointet, Trisha Donnelly, Eliza Douglas, Claire Fontaine, Jef Geys, Liam Gillick, Joseph Grigely, GuytonWalker, Carsten Höller, Michel Houellebecq, Dorothy Iannone, Aaron Flint Jamison, Pierre Joseph, Ben Kinmont, Adriana Lara, Pierre Le Tan , Ingrid Luche, Mïrka Lugosi, Monica Majoli, M/M (Paris), Sarah Morris, Mrzyk & Moriceau, Jean Painlevé, Philippe Parreno, Bruno Pelassy, Rob Pruitt, Sarah Pucci, Torbjørn Rødland, Allen Ruppersberg, Bruno Serralongue, Shimabuku, Lily van der Stokker, Sturtevant, Jean-Luc Verna

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Venue: Air de Paris

Exhibition Title: More

Date: October 20 – December 14, 2019

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Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:














































































Images courtesy of Air de Paris, Paris. Photos by Marc Domage.

Press Release:

To mark the opening of the new Air de Paris in Romainville we’re delighted to be presenting the choral exhibition More: 40 artists on four floors and the chance for a stroll through all the gallery’s spaces, from cellar to attic, from reserves to roof terrace.

Running over a three months time, this exhibition will see the achievement of the interior design of the gallery, a project led by Sébastien Truchot – PCA STREAM

We’ll also be welcoming Linda Grabe and her wine webzine Le Volatile, le roman du vin.

For some 30 years now Air de Paris has cultivated a fondness for the peripheral. The move to Romainville shows us pursuing this notion in a restating of Liam Gillick’s maxim «Just More/More Just».

GROUND FLOOR

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We’ve opted to have you enter Air de Paris via the office. You’ll be welcomed by the gallery team. And get to see how things work.
Two works by Liam Gillick are already visible from outside the gallery, on display like the paintings you see in the more classical venues – on Rue de Seine, for example. These digital prints were part of the artist’s works posted in the streets during his participation in the 2013 White Nights in Paris.

We see the double slogan «Just More/More Just» as heralding a new era of trying to be more equitable, more ecological and more just in our dealings. Liam Gillick, Just More! 2013/More Just!, 2013

On your left as you come in is a Project by Pierre Joseph dating from his first solo exhibition at Air de Paris, in 1992, when we were in Nice. We were unequivocally neighbours of the church of Saint Rita; the parish priest had given us a statue of the saint, which had been set in a niche over the gallery door and blessed the day the first exhibition opened in 1990. Pierre Joseph’s Projects imbued contemporary art with the imaginative spirit of the video games and role play still in their infancy. Pierre Joseph, Projet, 1992

A big bouquet of long-stemmed flowers: Jean-Luc Verna’s Vase Misère is a self-portrait – the artist’s face with his hands forcing a smile and giving him the look of a clown. The Joker? Jean-Luc Verna, Vase Misère #3, 2013

Serve yourself from the rack: Claire Fontaine postcards, iconic images wittily tweaked with verbal modifications: L.G.B.T.Q. replaces Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q, which, according to Freud, triggered the question of Mona Lisa’s gender. Claire Fontaine, Untitled (Postcard rack / L.G.B.T.Q / L.G.B.T.Q. shaved), 2017

Set against a red wall, a Sturtevant video demands your attention: Hello! We live together at Disney World and all around us is the image pornography churned out by the big entertainment corporations. Sturtevant, HELLO !, 2006

Our office tables are an artwork by Aaron Flint Jamison for Éditathon Art + Féminisme 2016. Produced by Lafayette Anticipations – Galeries Lafayette Foundation as part of the worldwide Art+Feminism campaign, and orchestrated by Kvardek du and Flora Katz. The artist has activated a new message on the LED scrollers.Aaron Flint Jamison, {{Reflist}}, 2016

Hanging on the pillar, a portrait of Clément by Michel Houellebecq. Michel Houellebecq, Pelage d’hiver

Cats – never far from the dog!? Mrzyk & Moriceau, Sans titre, 2014

Early in the 1960s Sturtevant reprised graphic artist George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, after Öyvind Fahlström: two artists from our pantheon; two stalwarts for the price of one. Sturtevant, Krazy Kat, 1986

Beneath the windows, a large red lily. In another conceptual overlay Pierre Joseph does photographs that repeat the prints and drawings of Pierre Joseph Redouté. Pierre Joseph, #pierrejosephredouté, Lys hybride (rouge), 2017

Now it’s upstairs to the exhibition floors or down to the basement (our storage area) to view a work you’ve requested here in the office.

THE BASEMENT

A mysterious photograph by Trisha Donnelly. What to say about it? A snowdrift, a garage door, an image that can be hung every which way – an image that has no sense. Trisha Donnelly, Robert, 2001

1ST FLOOR

The 1st floor is an exhibition space whose unusual windows put us at a far remove from the classical white cube. It’s time to be thinking about different ways of presenting painting, and it’s fun. Maybe the kind of running structure used for election posters in the street? Or a return to the hanging rail?

So here you are at last in a real exhibition space.

An exhibition within an exhibition? Opposite you a painting by Eliza Douglas hung on a pillar reproduces a Josh Smith exhibition view, found on the Internet. Eliza Douglas, Josh Smith, 2018

A search for the centre ground kept in check by violence, disorder and conspiracy: a work by Liam Gillick. A large mirror searching for the three main characters from his book Le Grand Centre de Conférence. We are all characters in search of an author. Liam Gillick, A search for the centre ground kept in check by violence, disorder and conspiracy, 1998

You’ll notice along the way that this exhibition contains many works in the form of chairs, tables, doors and shelves. This is emphatically not a matter of design; these works point up the domestic and professional environments as augmented, highlighted spaces. Their pared-down or, sometimes, exaggerated, Luna Park-like shapes occupy this inaugural presentation like spectres, or punctuate it like clues.

To the right of the mirror Ingrid Luche’s little door suggests a grotesque space, the entrance to a haunted house, or a funfair attraction. Ingrid Luche, Petite Porte, 2012

Mirrors again. In Monica Majoli’s house in Los Angeles the bedroom walls are covered with black mirrors. It’s in this setting that she has photographed several of her lovers, so as to paint their portraits some years later. This lithograph depicts the odd plays of light caused by the reflections in these dark mirrors. Monica Majoli, Black Mirror (Jarrett), 2009-12

Joseph Grigely’s Storage Rack is part of a group of works he calls «leftovers». However, these are not real objects that have been junked, but rather never-made or remade objects, reified extensions of their preceding reality. The transparent resin shelf might have been used for storing paint, but no longer serves any purpose. It belongs to an unknown world, like the elements of a classical still life. Joseph Grigely, Storage Rack, 2012

The design work of Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992) has influenced several works by Leonor Antunes. In this case some of Bo Bardi’s experiments with form and proportion have left their mark on a series of wenge wood screens. These shapes are based on concrete components she had made in 1988 for the Casa do Benim in Salvador de Bahia, in northern Brazil. Leonor Antunes, a secluded and pleasant land in this land i wish to dwell #2, 2014

Marcel Duchamp spoke of a coat hook lying on the floor, «a real coat hanger that I wanted sometime to put on the wall and hang my things on but I never did come to that – so it was on the floor and I would kick it every minute, every time I went out – and I got crazy about it and I said to hell with it, if it wants to stay here and bore me, I’ll nail it down and it will just stay there.» Pierre Joseph has doubled the size of the Trap. Pierre Joseph, Décor, Trébuchet (Marcel Duchamp), 1992/2017

Philippe Parreno was artistic director of the opera Il Tempo del Postino in 2007. There’s a photograph of his performance: he’d hired a ventriloquist, who introduced each artist’s contribution and read a text about the relations between time and the work of art from behind a magnifying glass. In that way he became his own puppet. The photograph, signed by the artist and the ventriloquist, illustrates the question, «Who’s speaking?» Philippe Parreno, Postman Time, 2007

Nearby, the Maison-Oreille (House of Hearing) is a model thought up by Carsten Höller and Philippe Parreno for a listening post where you could spend the night tuned in to ambient sound: nature, aeroplanes, shooting stars, etc. Carsten Höller et Philippe Parreno, Maison-Oreille, 2013

Hung in front of a window to the left, François Curlet’s neon sign could have provided the title for this exhibition. Might not this disposition of artworks proceed from a slight perversion of the conceptual masked by all the different forms? One day an exhibition curator described our programme as «conceptual trash». You could also call it «conceptual art brut». François Curlet, Western, 2005/2006

The crackle of the neon light accentuates the flickering of Ingrid Luche’s fireplace painting, set under a window and maybe suggesting a scene from Clifford D. Simak’s City.Ingrid Luche, Chinoiserie (Feu de cheminée), 2014

In an elegant vitrine ten delicate replicas of mildly hallucinatory double mushrooms are aligned as if in a natural history museum. Carsten Höller, Double Mushroom Vitrine (Tenfold), 2018

The title of Pierre Joseph’s lightbox describes the work perfectly: a reprise, in the musical sense, of a cowboy already twice- famous, thanks first to Marlboro, then to Richard Prince. What the title omits is the work’s melancholy. Pierre Joseph, Décor, Marlboro cow-boy (Richard Prince), 1992/2019

Red, too, is the spring of the neon towards Sadie Benning’s transgender painting/bas-relief. Sadie Benning, X, 2016

Chairs here and there; these have been customised by Rob Pruitt as stop-offs or resting places.

2ND FLOOR

On the 2nd floor we’ve planned a projection room, an exhibition area and a semi-private space behind a revolving door. The interior layout is by Sébastien Truchot of the PCA-Stream office.

A memory warp? The same Josh Smith exhibition view as before – but hey, isn’t it bigger? Eliza Douglas, Josh Smith, 2018

On the outside of the right-angled wall marking out the future projection space is Allen Ruppersberg’s Le Mot Juste. That «just» again, and a horizon line. Seven screenprints for a samurai poem. Allen Ruppersberg, Le Mot Juste and The Circus, 1988

Facing you, yet another door, drawn by Pierre Le-Tan. We pay him our respects here: he left us on 17 September and we miss him.Pierre Le-Tan, Sans titre, 2017

La Chaise Jaune and la Chaise Bleue (The Yellow Chair and the Blue Chair) were part of Guy de Cointet’s set for his performance De Toutes les Couleurs (1982, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid). The chairs and another part of the set disappeared and it was only thanks to the artist’s meticulous archiving – colour ranges, dimensional sketches, performance photographs – that these two multiples, identical to the originals, could be made. Guy de Cointet, Chaise Bleue, Chaise Jaune [De toutes les couleurs, 1982], 2018

The angularity of the backrests of these chairs is also to be be found in two late de Cointet drawings of pared-down Californian desert landscapes. Guy de Cointet, Sans titre, ca. 1980

Adriana Lara’s «wall piece» is an irregularly cut sheet of plaster mounted on stretcher. A deformed section of wall, repainted with the same white as the wall it is affixed to. Adriana Lara, Wall Piece #3, 2015

Rob Pruitt decided one day that as long as pandas were still around, he would paint them. This was his response to the threat to biodiversity in the Capitalocene era.Rob Pruitt, Picnic, 2017

A witty practitioner of Surrealist collage, Pruitt has made tables out of silver-coated tyres set on roller skates. This one is a fruit bowl.Rob Pruitt, Roller Rink Coffee Table II (Fruit Bowl), 2017

Bruno Pelassy was a close friend of Air de Paris who died in 2002. Here we present one of his last works: an unfinished mechanical toy arrayed in feathers and snakeskin. Bruno Pelassy, Sans titre, 2001

Dedicated daily repetition gave rise to the plastic-bedecked objects made by Sarah Pucci, mother of the artist Dorothy Iannone. These intensely committed creations date from the second half of the 20th century and were regularly posted to her daughter, who was then based in Europe. Proofs of motherly love, they gleam with a steroidally idealised, carnivalesque beauty. Sarah Pucci, A Heart That Sees You, 1990s

To the left, under the windows, you can follow the doings of Andy Capp, the English comic-strip character created by Reg Smyth and published in the Daily Mirror since 1957. Double-exposure photography has him trotting his cap-and-ciggie through building sites that are a metaphor for our lives. Torbjørn Rødland, ACV01, ACV06, ACV07, ACV14, ACV17, 2009

M/M (Paris): two talented graphic artists who minted the Komunuma logo. One M has a gifted hand and draws. The other M has a gifted ear and in 1998 composed the techno sound track for Sturtevant’s Ça va aller exhibition. Facing you here is a large, luminously stylised lion. M/M (Paris), Zu Assenheim, 2006

At the far end of the room the place for the future projection screen is currently covered by a billboard-sized image of Santa by the sea. This is, in fact, Shimabuku, who in 1991 collected garbage on this forsaken beach and provided a quick, mind- boggling image for any high-speed train travellers who happened to be looking out the window at the right moment. Father Christmas gathering refuse on a soiled seashore. Speculative ecological poetry. Shimabuku, Noël dans l’hémisphère Sud, 1994/1999

More light! You’ll excuse the shortfall in this room, but the renovations are running behind time and the additional lighting is still on the waiting list. You’re in a work in progress.

A wall of drawings brings together Mathias Augustyniak’s women in 68 colours, Mïrka Lugosi’s triadic women and Dorothy Iannone’s weeping Statues of Liberty (Iannone is currently showing solo at the Centre Pompidou) : Mathias Augustyniak, Woman in 68 colors n°3 ; Woman in 68 colors n°4, 2010 ; Dorothy Iannone, Our Liberties, 2015 ; Mïrka Lugosi, Variations Schlemmer n°1 ; Variations Schlemmer n°2 ; Variations Schlemmer n°3, 2009-2012

Let’s not forget Jean-Luc Verna’s made-up birds : Jean-Luc Verna, Madame Rature, 2019; Jean-Luc Verna, Pank, 2019. Last of all, Sarah Morris’s combination of painting and cinema, with gouache overlaid on original film posters: good old Alain Delon in a samurai face-off with Santa Claus. Sarah Morris, Tiger [Le Samourai], 2017

As you leave, high up on your left, is a spider ready to spring: the work of Jean Painlevé, the great filmmaker and photographer who devoted his life to the depths of the sea. Jean Painlevé, Araignée sauteuse, 1930

You’re drawn through the big revolving door by the sound of Saturday Night Fever blasting out of the little yellow TV set we used for showing Brice Dellsperger’s first films back in the 1990s. Double recall. Brice Dellsperger, Body Double 13, 1999

Above it, a gouache in which we see the artist duplicated and as Angie Dickenson, when he played all the parts from Brian de Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) for his Body Double 15. Brice Dellsperger, Angie said « Meet me at the Met (featuring Alex Katz and Tom Palmore), 2019

But hey, I live in France, and here’s an ageless photograph by Michel Houellebecq, a bucolic image brought to Le Bas-Pays, the industrial estate in Romainville. Michel Houellebecq, France #024, nd.

On the way to the kitchen, an unstretched digital canvas by Stéphane Dafflon: Stéphane Dafflon, TL005, 2019.
And here you are in a space that will be semi-private: the planned site for the kitchen (we make good risotto at Air de Paris),a room for chatting or relaxing, and a library. A space that’s domestic but not yet domesticated. Under the window on the right a piece of tangy daffiness by Lily van der Stokker says nothing apart from its absurd, caustic Dasein. Lily van der Stokker, Nothing (Dark Pink), 2014

En face, une œuvre joyeusement colorée de GuytonWalker, une impression numérique recto-verso sur matelas. GuytonWalker, Stripe_Venice_Paris_Abstractcanvas80_, 2013

«Each of us had more drinks every day than the number of lies told by a labour union during a wildcat strike»: an excerpt – a kind of led-driven ritornello – from In GirumImus Nocte Et Consomimur Igni by Guy Debord (1978). Upcoming psychogeographic driftings through the Paris suburbs. The fridge isn’t part of the work. Noah Barker, Decommissioned Cuba Libre Assembly Line Clock (Debord), 2018.

Two rare paintings by Dutch artist Jef Geys, in which he takes the orientally-inflected patterns of earthenware tiles made by the Gavra company in his beloved Campine (Dutch: De Kempen) and blows them up to a metre square. Jef Geys, Untitled (Gavra series), 1980s, acrylique sur toile, signé au dos.

In Marinetti’s opinion, people think, dream and act according to what they eat and drink. Which is how cooking became an integral part of the Futurist artistic experience. Ben Kinmont’s actions test the resistance of the work of art in contexts not strictly speaking artistic: a dinner, participation in a salon, an ephemeral action. Thus gastronomy, as an artistic but temporary structure, becomes a potent model for testing out art’s limitations.

Kinmont organised his gustatory exhibitions in Montpellier (2002), Amsterdam and New York (2011), and Rome (2015)/ The menus are traditionally printed using lead type.
Ben Kinmont, An exhibition in your mouth [Montpellier: Antinomian Press, 2002], 2002
Ben Kinmont, An Exhibition in your Mouth [Amsterdam: Antinomian Press, 2011], 2011
Ben Kinmont, An Exhibition in your Mouth [New York: Antinomian Press, 2011], 2011
Ben Kinmont, An Exhibition in your Mouth [San Francisco: Antinomian Press, 2012], 2012
Ben Kinmont, An Exhibition in your Mouth [Rome: Antinomian Press, 2015], 2015

Bruno Serralongue has been making regular visits to Calais since 2006, bringing back images of the «Jungle», the migrants and the «state shanty town». His work is currently on show at the Centre Pompidou. For lack of supplies the Calais Kitchen, run by English volunteers, had to close for a week in July 2016. A week is a very long time when you’re enduring conditions like these. Bruno Serralongue, Dear Friends, « bidonville d’État » pour migrants, Calais, 07 juillet 2016, 2016

THE ROOF TERRACE THE FUTURE

During the opening week of Komunuma the Frac Ile-de-France presented an installaiton by Michel Blazy (Sculpcure : Orange Bar, 2009)

Soon in a wooden shed – we will name it Delphine – we will display curiosities.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this visit and your meeting with 40 Air de Paris’ artists. Thanks for coming – we look forward to seeing you again.

Link: “More” at Air de Paris

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