Paola Pivi : You Gotta Be Kidding Me, 2007

29 June – 26 August 2007

If you like it, thank you.
If you don’t like it, I’m sorry.
Enjoy anyway, 2007

steel, resin, plastic beads
L 1427 x l 25 x h 670 cm

Monograph

It’s a cocktail party
Paola Pivi, 2010

• publishers
  Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne

• co-publishers
  Portikus, Francfort

  La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes

• authors
  Robert Cailliau, Massimiliano Gioni, Martin Herbert, Scott Jonsson

  foreword: Melanie Ohnemus, Larys Frogier

42 x 27,9 cm, 120 pages
english – german – french
29 pictures color, 3 pictures black and white

ISBN978-3-86560-846-8

Paola Pivi produces unexpected situations, actions and extensions where paradoxes and contradictions (lightness and gravity, sweetness and violence…) are making the image beyond a constative reality.

For La Criée art centre, Paola Pivi conceived a stunning installation made of a vast metallic grid structure unfolding from the ground to the ceiling of the gallery. The entire structure is then covered with a myriad of multicolored beads looking as fake precious stones. The grid structure is punctuated with abstract modules that can refer to water drops or tears. Entering the exhibition space, the visitor is immediately facing this monumental work oscillating between an abstract painting surface and a a volumetric sculpture. Beyond these immediate references, the artwork conveys paradoxical perceptions such as:

– The simplicity and the lightness of the image that contradict the monumentality of the structure

– The visual seduction of the multicolored beads opens up to a threatening feeling of the grid structure that cannot be broken through

– However colorful could look the space, it contains a dark and sad side

– To the over demonstrative superficiality of the installation follows a strong feeling of latent violence

As often in Paola Pivi’s exhibitions, narration is never something logical or natural. The first impression of surprise is followed by an deeper experience leading the visitor to an atypical, absurd, bizarre and extravagant universe. The artist likes to create situations situations improbable situations to experience. Thus everything becomes possible.