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Leon Tarasewicz : Landscape of Painting, 2003

Leon Tarasewicz creates pictorial installations according to the specificities of the exhibition site. Pervading on grounds as well  as on walls, Leon Tarasewicz painting always goes beyond the limits of the canvas in order to create pictorial landscapes with intense luminosity. Covering all the ground of the art center with plaster, the artist manages to create accidental that are then painted with vivid colors.

 

 

” The painting of Leon Tarasewicz emerges from the observation of landscape, giving tribute to nature in its most findamental aspects. It is about the imitation of nature in a very humble and tender way. With color, texture, light and rythm, the artist creates new worlds as real as the one in which we are living in. For tarasewicz painting is his own element combining ritual and play: an endless experiment with color, rythm and ground. From his painting, radiates joy of creation. “
Aneta Prasal-Wishiewska, in catalogue de la 49e Biennale de Venise, Plateau de l’Humanité, 2001, vol.2, p.92.
Exhibition view "Leon Tarasewicz: Landscape of Painting", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2003. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Exhibition view "Leon Tarasewicz: Landscape of Painting", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2003. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Exhibition view "Leon Tarasewicz: Landscape of Painting", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2003. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Exhibition view "Leon Tarasewicz: Landscape of Painting", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2003. Photo : Benoît Mauras.

Credits

Curated by Larys Frogier
Produced by La Criée centre for Contemporary Art, Rennes
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Wang Du : Parade, 2004

Born 1956 in Wuhan, province of Hubei, China
Lives and works since 1990 in Paris, France
Wang Du – Parade locations:
#1: La Criée, centre for contemporary art, Rennes
#2: Le Rectangle, centre for art of the Ville de Lyon
#3: Les Abattoirs, space for modern and contemporary art, Toulouse
#4: Palais de Tokyo, site for contemporary creation, Paris
#5: Le Lieu Unique, Nantes
#6: Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver

Parade is an artwork composed of a 15m long platform on which are displayed 13 resin mouldings reproducing in three dimension pictures and  characters extracted from the Chinese military propaganda press.

 

The work has been produced in autumn 2000 for the exhibition at Deitch Project in New York, during a period of high political tensions between the United States and China in the context of spying planes. Very spectacular but also conveying a powerful critical impact, this artwork has never been shown in France.

 

Upon the occasion of each exhibition of the Wang Du Parade in Rennes, Lyon, Toulouse, Paris, Nantes and Vancouver, the Wang Du Parade was enriched with existing works and new productions, such as the brand new famous work Tunnel d’espace temps and steel sculptures made of fold newspapers.

 

In Rennes, the series of sculptures We’re Smoking them Out ! was showing different scales of the American president Georges Bush during his workout sessions.
Exhibition view "Wang Du Parade", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2004. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Exhibition view "Wang Du Parade", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2004. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Exhibition view "Wang Du Parade", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2004. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Exhibition view "Wang Du Parade", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2004. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Exhibition view "Wang Du Parade", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2004. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Exhibition view "Wang Du Parade", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2004. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Wang Du, opening performance, exhibition view "Wang Du Parade", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2004. Photo : Benoît Mauras.
Exhibition view "Wang Du Parade", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2004. Photo : Benoît Mauras.

Credits

Collected by Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation, Beijing
Produced by Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, Le Palais de Tokyo, space for contemporary art, Paris, Le Rectangle, Lyon
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Javier Pérez : Anomalies, 2005

24 June – 7 September 2005

Né en 1968 à Bilbao en Espagne, Javier Pérez réside et travaille à Barcelone. Après des études à la Faculté des Beaux-Arts de Bilbao, il termine sa formation en 1993 à l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. En 2001, il est choisi pour représenter l’Espagne lors de la Biennale de Venise.

 

 

Par les pratiques de dessin, de sculpture et de vidéo, Javier Pérez questionne les représentations contemporaines du corps. A l’opposé des images anatomiques et identitaires qui nous entourent, l’artiste préfère rendre sensible le corps dans son devenir charnel et poétique, ouvert à toutes les transformations.

 

 

Chaque corps étant multiple, l’artiste s’empare sans hiérarchie des fantasmes et des contradictions qui le régissent, pour faire librement circuler les effets de sens et d’intuition. Mis en scène comme une étendue où sont explorées les notions de frontières et de devenir, le corps se prête à toutes sortes de mutations, passant de ses figures sociales à son vécu intérieur, de son ouverture au monde à son isolement existentiel. Son approche n’est pas sans évoquer certains textes de Borges ou Kafka. Javier Pérez déconstruit les définitions figées du corps pour visualiser la matière vivante et proposer l’expérience de ses vibrations et résonances.

 

 

Soucieux de la portée esthétique de ses œuvres, Javier Pérez est attentif aux propriétés premières des matériaux : le verre ou la céramique sont modelés pour dégager finalement des formes inattendues. Nombre de ses œuvres échappent alors à toute prétention de vérité : elles oscillent entre beauté et répulsion, fragilité et consistance, opacité et dévoilement.

 

 

L’exposition à La Criée présente six séries d’œuvres récentes, sculptées et dessinées.
  • Mutaciones IV et Mutaciones VI (2004) ont été initialement réalisées pour l’exposition du Musée Reina Sofia au sein de l’étonnante architecture d’acier et de verre du Palacio de Cristal de Madrid. Combinant les possibilités matérielles du nickel et du miroir, du sable et de la résine, Javier Pérez donne naissance à des formes hybrides évoluant entre le végétal, le minéral et l’organique. Les reflets des espaces environnants sur les surfaces de miroir produisent une scénographie qui ouvre sur un espace illimité du corps.
  • Tempus fugit (2002-2004) réunit des cloches de verre suspendues. D’un timbre cristallin, elles sonnent le glas du temps révolu, tandis que la lumière y est absorbée et reflétée. Le corps et le temps entretiennent un rapport ambivalent : le mouvement, la mutation, le cycle sont aussi synonymes de fragilité, d’instabilité, de disparition.
  • Desaparecer dentro (1995-2005) est une installation en laine, teinte en rouge : elle représente la tête et les épaules enserrées dans des circonvolutions encéphaliques. L’accessoire du masque, récurrent dans l’art de Javier Pérez, rassemble contenant et contenu, surface et profondeur. Son effet de miroir enrichit la figure d’une épaisseur plus complexe, invisible.
  • Capillares II (2002) explore les résonances visuelles et allégoriques du crin de cheval. Teint aussi en rouge, ce tissage, long de 3.50 m, peut évoquer les dernières ramifications qui irriguent le sang avec l’axe d’équilibre offert par la colonne vertébrale.
  • Animal-Vegetal (2001) place la figure humaine au cœur de cette série de dessins, en procédant par combinaison de motifs et par renouvellement des formes.
  • Metamorfosis (2004) rassemble cinquante-deux dessins à l’encre, où l’animal, le végétal et l’homme fusionnent. Les traits tissent les liens d’une nouvelle entité.
Javier Pérez, exhibition view "Anomalies", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2005. Photo: Marc Domage.
Javier Pérez, exhibition view "Anomalies", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2005. Photo: Marc Domage.
Javier Pérez, exhibition view "Anomalies", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2005. Photo: Marc Domage.
Javier Pérez, exhibition view "Anomalies", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2005. Photo: Marc Domage.
Javier Pérez, exhibition view "Anomalies", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2005. Photo: Marc Domage.
Javier Pérez, exhibition view "Anomalies", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2005. Photo: Marc Domage.
Javier Pérez, exhibition view "Anomalies", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2005. Photo: Marc Domage.
Javier Pérez, exhibition view "Anomalies", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2005. Photo: Marc Domage.
Javier Pérez, exhibition view "Anomalies", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2005. Photo: Marc Domage.

Credits

Curated by Larys Frogier
Produced by La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes
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Adel Abdessemed : Practice Zero Tolerance, 2006

The terracotta sculptures of Practice Zero Tolerance, done between 2006 and 2008, were directly linked to reports of the riots that hit the ghetto suburbs of Paris in 2005 following the death of a boy who was electrocuted while trying to flee the police. Adel Abdessemed’s reproductions of cars that were subsequently torched in revenge brought an instantly recognizable icon of a complex social event into the gallery space. They sharp- ly questioned public policies of “zero tolerance,” the stark and troubling phrase heard by the artist when he turned on his television.

 

These cars swiftly became symbolic icons of a rage that the media often described as inexplicable. Here the media icon is treated through the techniques of traditional pottery with all their material and temporal density. The gutted car was cast in clay, then fired in a kiln until the cast was burnt and blackened. The act of burning was thus employed in a process not of destruction but of creation—the artistic creativity of casting, the creativity of the human act of crafting something (via the handprints left in the mold). The resulting object is simultaneously an overturned car that alludes to a scene of collective memory, a layered, complex memory that demands a labor of exploration and elaboration on the part of the be- holder. The act of rebellion directed toward cars as a status symbol—their make and models remaining fully recognizable here—is thus staged in a gesture that simultaneously restores and overturns, as suggested by the title given to a cast of a BMW, Practice Zero Tolerance (retournée), i.e. “overturned.” AM

Practice Zero Tolerance
2006 / Terracotta
120 x 365 x 165 cm
Frac Île-de-France / Le Plateau, Paris 2006
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris 2012
Sculpture, video, drawing, writing, action constitute as many practices as possible for Adel Abdessemed to deliver sharp critical reading of our contemporary world.

 

Blunt statements, acts of crushing, pouring, unveiling, images of life and death… No narration but the vital act of living and resisting.
Lemon, milk, soil, wine are used for their raw materiality as well as for their symbolic resonances to the law or the discipline.
Exclusion, sexuality, exile, love, infinity: Adel Abdessemed questions these sensitive areas not to produce a political art but to generate poetics of transgression and pleasure.
Adel Abdessemed’s works are more to be seen as extensions of energies where desire, joy, opposition  are firmly and openly stated and through which concept, thinking and language can be unfolded.
« What should I say to a friend who is telling me that art should tell the truth? It is of course what I wish. Unfortunately I started to lie to my father, my mother, my religion. Truly, art can work… Even if it is fake, everything becomes true (…) I am concerned with the beauty of the raw image. It is raw in the montage. It is raw in the image. I capture des energy of the bodies, a presence.  (…) I love oppositions in all forms of. I hate what is formatted, homogenous. A hygienist world without conflicts is impossible. I work a lot with other people, but I am not doing social art. The question of social art is very suspicious to me in a scary world of spectacle.«
Adel Abdessemed, extracts from the interview with Anne Bonin, Artpress Spécial, October 2004, n°25.

Artist’s book
The Green Book
Adel Abdessemed
2002
publisher
La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes
co-publishers
Centre national d’art et du paysage de Vassivière
Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims
Frac Haute-Normandie, Sotteville-les-Rouen

52,1 x 25,5 cm

104 pages
french
color, black & white

 

“The Green Book contains my collection of national anthems. Each anthem has been hand-written by a different person from his/her native tongue. It’s a very familiar book, a kind of manifest… Of course, the fact that the French anthem has been hissed in the French Stadium stands has relaunched the project. Like this incident, the book expresses a malaise, a social urgency”
Adel Abdessemed, extract of the interview

 

Postcard
Father
Adel Abdessemed
2002
publishers
La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes
Centre national d’art et du paysage de Vassivière
Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims
Frac Haute-Normandie, Sotteville-lès-Rouen
Exhibition view "Adel Abdessemed: Pratice Zero Tolerance", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2006. Photo: Marc Domage.
Exhibition view "Adel Abdessemed: Pratice Zero Tolerance", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2006. Photo: Marc Domage.
Exhibition view "Adel Abdessemed: Pratice Zero Tolerance", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2006. Photo: Marc Domage.
Exhibition view "Adel Abdessemed: Pratice Zero Tolerance", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2006. Photo: Marc Domage.
Exhibition view "Adel Abdessemed: Pratice Zero Tolerance", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2006. Photo: Marc Domage.
Exhibition view "Adel Abdessemed: Pratice Zero Tolerance", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2006. Photo: Marc Domage.
Exhibition view "Adel Abdessemed: Pratice Zero Tolerance", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2006. Photo: Marc Domage.
Exhibition view "Adel Abdessemed: Pratice Zero Tolerance", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2006. Photo: Marc Domage.
Exhibition view "Adel Abdessemed: Pratice Zero Tolerance", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2006. Photo: Marc Domage.

Credits

Curated by Larys Frogier, Caroline Bourgeois
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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.
Paola Pivi, "If you like it Thank you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. Enjoy anyway", installation, exhibition view Paola Pivi: You Gotta Be Kidding Me", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2007. Photo: Attilio Maranzano.
Paola Pivi, "If you like it Thank you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. Enjoy anyway", installation, exhibition view Paola Pivi: You Gotta Be Kidding Me", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2007. Photo: Attilio Maranzano.
Paola Pivi, "If you like it Thank you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. Enjoy anyway", installation, exhibition view Paola Pivi: You Gotta Be Kidding Me", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2007. Photo: Attilio Maranzano.
Paola Pivi, "If you like it Thank you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. Enjoy anyway", installation, exhibition view Paola Pivi: You Gotta Be Kidding Me", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2007. Photo: Attilio Maranzano.
Paola Pivi, "If you like it Thank you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. Enjoy anyway", installation, exhibition view Paola Pivi: You Gotta Be Kidding Me", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2007. Production: La Criée centre d’art contemporain, Rennes. Photo: Attilio Maranzano.
Paola Pivi, "If you like it Thank you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. Enjoy anyway", installation, exhibition view Paola Pivi: You Gotta Be Kidding Me", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2007. Photo: Attilio Maranzano.
Paola Pivi, "If you like it Thank you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. Enjoy anyway", installation, exhibition view Paola Pivi: You Gotta Be Kidding Me", La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2007. Photo: Attilio Maranzano.

Credits

Curated by Larys Frogier
Produced by