August 23rd - October 18th, 2014
Opening Reception
Saturday, August 23rd, 2014 from 6 - 9 pm
Gallery Two
I Want to Live in Los Angeles / Not The One in Los Angeles
Benjamin Ferrachat
Robin Jiro Margerin
Justine Ponthieux
Pierre Thyss
Ana Vega
This exhibition is a collective exhibition project, bringing together new works by Parisian artists.
“ SUMMER FLING
- Robin Jiro Margerin
We made it up.
Everything is fiction now that we made it all up.
There is nothing of Los Angeles, it is all just a bunch of foreign impressions caused by a temporary shift in the parameters of our personae.
From one western bubble to another, and within that transfer alone, our vision already inevitably skewed.
We came here and felt light, that didn’t seem very Parisian of us.
Something was off, something turned on.
That is what we want.
Nothing that defines us comes from here, LA that is, we are simply exhilarated by the absence of need for definition. We don’t have to be ourselves; we can make it all up.
We like it here because it only belongs to us when we are not here.
We first saw Los Angeles from afar, in versions sublime or vulgar, enticing or overblown.
It is a noun and an adjective, so LA.
We found ourselves occupying a tiny membrane, legs dangling on either side of a border.
We were in Paris projecting upon LA those ideas that we had previously projected on LA when arriving from Paris, or on Paris from LA. Something messy like that.
You couldn’t call it culture shock because it all felt so familiar, like finally meeting someone you have heard everything about.
They are different enough from each other to create a mutual attraction, related enough in their ubiquity to be mutually comprehensible.
It is almost embarrassing how effectively our sense of self was altered by the change of scenery, how rapidly we became the darlings of our own circumstances.
It was so easy to discard the Parisian mindset, like removing a heavy winter coat.
All that you let go becomes something newly malleable, comprehensible.
One becomes acutely aware of all the conventions that were previously definitive in that other place, because in this place they are ill-fitting and absurd.
We don’t care though, we’ll be gone soon and we will just make up stories about you, LA.
We will never forget everything we made up”
A boundary is a territory confined, a sector of exchange defined by contact. The border line is itself a surface, simultaneously permeable and opaque, on which we project. The title of the exhibition, drawn from the song Los Angeles (1993) by Frank Black, touches on the nuances of the definition by contradiction, as explored by the artists.
Paris and Los Angeles find common ground in their roles as Destinations, in the fetishistic sense - mental post cards presenting something between evasion and aspiration. And yet, they offer themselves in extremis from one another, antipodes as much in their reality as in their promises. The romanticism through which they view each other exists only in the context of their mutual remoteness.
Far from an identity crisis... Just a feeling.
A group exhibition featuring site-specific works by Benjamin Ferrachat, Robin Jiro Margerin, Justine Ponthieux, Pierre Thyss and Ana Vega.
A city, within its most generic concept and design, is constructed by the division of one territory from another, defining identities on either side of that dividing line. Likewise, any designation or formalization of a space, in its contours and its volume, generates and characterizes social relations.
A flag is planted, a territory described, an identity defined.
Within this common ground are operating the vehicles of separation and approach. The spectator is welcomed into an inert choreography within the architecture of the museum. Three zones that choreograph types of social dynamics.
Acting as mascots to the exhibition, Pierre Thyss’ pole banners, Muscle man and Taco dude (2014), designate the event’s horizon. While delimiting the space, they also serve as the figureheads in the broader social campaign of the exhibition - as much caricatures of archetypes as they are of the foreign perception which conjures them.
Benjamin Ferrachat’s, No drinking / No smoking (2014), imports the context of the Parisian terrasse to a location hostile to the pedestrian. The piece compels the viewer to look away from it by offering a seat that imposes a specific posture. The arrangement triggers that social activity whereby one looks out in judgment from a distance. Side by side in a row, each person becomes an island in the position of the observer.
The third space, located in the gallery, is altered to unveil its contents progressively. It is a contemplative zone, one in which the spectator becomes an audience. A zone of spectacle. With an orchestrated sequence of light and image and sound tracks, timed for the zapper’s attention span, it is adapted to elicit frustration and pay-off. One can stand there and watch. Justine Ponthieux’s, Untitled (2014), human scale creature also stands there, as a posture guide, a hybrid between spectator and feature.
The room is drawn in two by a screen, shifting from transparent to opaque. It is a four minute show with four minutes of interlude, cycling the spectator through passive observation and self-awareness, in an ongoing ellipse. Between the projections on the screen of Ana Vega’s films, She (2014), and behind it Robin Jiro Margerin’s sculpture, Express Yourself (chain gang) (2014), it is unclear which stands in which role. They are both on a plane inaccessible to the touch, trapped in the gaze.
The exhibition makes a larger suggestion about the notion of cultural distinctions. As separate examples of western civilization, we find ourselves opposed in the same category. Acutely sensitive to every nuance of perceived otherness, and seeking truths in those ramifications heralded in shades. It is a recognition of the connected cultural narrative between these two territories, the very notion of which tends towards exclusion. So absorbed as we are by our western culture’s loudness, one could argue that ours is perhaps particularly gluttonous in this regard and shrinks only when in contact with a third party.
A dazzling diva who transfixes all somewhere between shock and awe.
Pierre Thyss
Tacodude, 2014
Muscle man, 2014
Untitled, 2014
Color Printed vinyl pole banners (kakemonos)
Courtesy of the artist
Justine Ponthieux
Untitled
2014
Polyurethane resin, galvanized steel, polymer-coated cement, midnight #2 nail polish
Courtesy of the artist
Ana Vega
SHE (is fine), 2014
SHE (parallels), 2014
1 & 2 of pop-up film triptych
266 seconds and 246 seconds respectively
Courtesy of the artist
Ana Vega
SHE (is fine), 2014
SHE (parallels), 2014
1 & 2 of pop-up film triptych
266 seconds and 246 seconds respectively
Courtesy of the artist
Robin Jiro Margerin
Express yourself (Chain gang)
2014
Six digitally blurred logos embroidered on classic snap-back caps, welded steel chain, color inkjet print
Courtesy of the artist