!e Invitation Book
JANUARY — MARCH 2018
Openings N EW YOR K
Hans Hartung
JAN UARY 12 MAR CH 3
Jean-Michel Othoniel Artie Vierkant PAR I S
Johan Creten Josh Sperling
JAN UARY 10
MAR CH 17
Lee Bae Paul Pfeiffer Ma"hew Ronay HONG KONG
Izumi Kato
JAN UARY 19
KAWS
MAR CH 26 S EOU L JAN UARY 24
Lionel Estève
MAR CH 21
Leslie Hewi" TOKYO
JAN UARY 18 MAR CH 22
Hernan Bas KAWS
13 0 O R C HAR D STR E ET NY 10002
Hans Hartung Opening Friday January 12, 6 - 8 pm January 12 – February 18
Jean-Michel Othoniel Opening Saturday March 3, 4 - 8 pm March 3 – April 15
Artie Vierkant Opening Saturday March 3, 4 - 8 pm March 3 – April 15
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Hans Hartung A Constant Storm. Works from 1923 to 1989 Curated by Matthieu Poirier Opening Friday January 12, 6 - 8 pm January 12 – February 18 Perrotin is honoured to present “Hans Hartung: A Constant Storm. Works from 1923 to 1989,” the first exhibition of Hans Hartung at the gallery, which is now the representative of the Hartung Estate. !e exhibition, featuring nearly 70 works spanning seven decades of Hartung’s career, will be the most important solo presentation of the artist in New York since his solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in 1975. !anks to exceptional loans from the Hartung-Bergman Foundation and major American institutions, key works by the artist have been brought together for this survey exhibition tracing the artist’s development from the first abstract works in about 1922 through 1989, the year of his passing. Hans Hartung was a pioneer and major proponent of abstract art and modernism. Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1904, he developed a practice of gestural painting that was both instinctive and regulated. !e seemingly immediate aesthetic impact of Hartung’s paintings is in fact the result of subtle layering. !ese strikingly vivid and immaterial clusters of colour are formed by a complex, almost alchemical process, stemming from a particular relation to the real. Each of the works by Hartung brought together for this project is a kind of oxymoron, the outcome of what the artist called the “continual correction of what is done at speed.” In this artistic paradox, the tempest is constant and the deflagration always channelled. !e point is to change the way we look at this singular pictorial universe made up of coloured grounds over which float various forms and graphic structures, ranging from indeterminate, amorphous “blotches” to strident, sharp-edged signs, all produced by the artist’s swi" gestures. From the end of the 1940s, Hartung’s paintings enjoyed great success and had many imitators in Europe, where he was recognised as a real artistic leader, and also across the Atlantic, in relation to Abstract Expressionism in New York. 2
Always wary of dogma and categories, Hartung never encouraged a one-way reading of his work and it remains difficult, even today, to precisely define his contribution in historical or critical terms. !is is due to the deep singulari$ of his oeuvre but also to his own life and its traumas: a German expelled by the Nazis, he fought on the Allied side and lost a leg in ba%le while carrying a wounded man; he was then awarded the Croix de la Guerre and naturalised as a Frenchman. Both German and French, romantic and rational, he was a%racted at once to the expressive brutali$ of Die Brücke and the scenographic intensi$ of Rembrandt, the $pological rigor of Paul Klee and the formal clari$ of Henri Matisse. By do&edly ploughing his own furrow, Hartung in a sense refused to choose between two simplistic visions of abstract art: on one side, eruptive and chaotic painting, based on pure intuition, combined with the expressionist, gestural, lyrical, informal and Tachiste tendencies of post-war painting; and, on the other, control, precision and systems, whose notions belong more to the realm of geometric abstraction. !roughout his rich and productive career, Hartung was obsessed with renewing his painting, and he achieved this through some remarkable technical innovations. At the same time, he was 3
T1964-E25 1964 Vinylic paint on canvas 73 × 92 cm 28 3/4 × 36 1/4 in
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constantly going back to the seminal artistic vocabulary that he elaborated instinctively a"er World War I. He thus constructed his practice in a constant back-and-forth between the physical impulses of work in the studio and the resurgences of a sensorial memory, between the transcription of the sense of nature and the conception of pure painting 'ndamentally liberated from any kind of imagery. Ma%hieu Poirier
Extract of A Constant Storm. Works from 1923 to 1989, January 2018
Two exhibitions will be organized simultaneously at Simon Lee Gallery, London and Nahmad Contemporary, New York. A catalog will be published on this occasion. !e book A Constant Storm. Works from 1923 to 1989 will be published in January 2018 by Perrotin. T1988-R46 1988 Acrylic on canvas 154 Ă— 250 cm 60 5/8 Ă— 98 7/16 in
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Hans Hartung (born Leipzig 1904, died Antibes 1989) is one of the most acclaimed European painters of the 20th century. In 2018, the Kunstmuseum Bonn will organize a solo exhibition of Hartung’s work. In 2016-2017, his work was the subject of major solo shows at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, Italy, and at the Fonds Hélène & Édouard Leclerc pour la Culture, Landerneau, France, curated by Xavier Douroux. Selected group exhibitions include the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, France (2009), alongside Martin Kippenberger and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland (2008) which featured Jackson Pollock, Eva Hesse and Robert Motherwell. His work is held in many prominent collections worldwide, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., USA; the Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland; the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico Ci$; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; the Solomon R. Gu&enheim Museum, New York, USA; the Tate Gallery, London, UK. 5
T1980-K5 1980 Acrylic on canvas 185 × 300 cm 72 13/16 × 118 1/8 in
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Jean-Michel Othoniel Dark Matters Opening Saturday March 3, 4pm - 8pm March 3 – April 15 Perrotin New York is pleased to present “Dark Matters”, Jean-Michel Othoniel’s seventh solo show at the gallery. With an ensemble of new and original works, some specially created for the occasion, the show spans several levels of the building to mark the inauguration of the whole building at 130 Orchard Street. A prominent artist on the French and international art scene, Jean-Michel Othoniel prefers materials with poetic and sensitive properties. From an exploration of drawing and sculpture, to installation and photography, writing and performance, he began working with glass, now his signature material, in the 1990s. Exhibited around the globe, Jean-Michel Othoniel questions how to live in today’s world through works in which beau$ is no longer an aesthetic element, but a condition of existence. Wild Knots !e artist’s latest creations in New York are characterized by the figure of the oxymoron, bringing together the monumental and the fragile, the austere and the marvelous, minimalism and baroque. All of the elements brought into play—glass, mirror, metal, ink, white gold— pertain to this desire for violent, minimal and telluric enchantment, contrasted today with the sorrow of the world. In Othoniel’s enchanted world, Heaven and Hell have the same face: one of a phantasmagorical universe over which the pain and judgment of our human realm have no hold. !e phantasmagoria receives and unifies opposites, be they moral judgments (good and evil) or aesthetic divisions (beauti'l and ugly, abstract and figurative). It a%ains the artistic 'lfillment sought by the Romantics. Schelling said that art was the resolution of an infinite contradiction in a finite object1. An awareness of the infini$ of contradictions, which has marked the artist’s oeuvre from the start, finds 'lfillment here in an understanding of art as a mechanism of phantasmagorical investment. In doing so, he takes up the radical stance that influential artist James Lee Byars brought to the contemporary art scene. Byars responded to endless doubts with a quest for perfection that took him to the outer limits of art: the total transformation of the world 6
into an object of contemplation, then, as a final step, the proposition of art as the only truly habitable world for the human spirit. Othoniel develops in his own language a conception of art as “a world in which to live”,2 an expression Gianni Va%imo used in reference to Byars ; a conception that can only materialize in a work in which beau$ is no longer an aesthetic element, but a condition of existence. Beau! and its reflections Mixing polished metal with mirrored glass, the works in this new show are devoted to storms and the violence of the elements. !e central pieces, a spring gushing forth from a blue gro%o and gigantic tornadoes spinning like mobiles, are surrounded by walls of mirrored bricks, cascading necklaces and large suspended glass beaded knots. The sculptures seek the violence of shapes; they demonstrate the perfect balance of hanging ellipses and the reflections between them. !e artist also draws from his fascination for observing the mathematical combinations of reflections endlessly multiplied, which gave rise to a dialogue with Mexican mathematician Aubin Arroyo. !e images he develops in his research 7
Tornado 2017 Aluminium beads, steel 360 × 510 × 340 cm 141 3/4 × 200 13/16 × 133 7/8 in
N EW YOR K echo the reflecting sculptures that Othoniel created in homage to Jacques Lacan. !is encounter between sculpture, psychoanalysis and mathematics inspired their book, Nudos Salvajes3 published in December 2017. At the same time, a piece by Jean-Michel Othoniel, !e Infinite Knot, entered the Institute of Mathematics collection at the Universi$ of Mexico. As Aubin Arroyo explains, “up until today, mathematicians have cataloged more than one and a half million different knots, starting from the simplest one towards the more complicated, and the catalog is still growing. However, the a%empt to order all the existing knots in such a catalog can never be completed. !is catalog only considers a class of knots called tame knots. A knot is tame if it can be constructed with the cord of a string formed by a finite number of beads, or pearls. !ere also are some knots that will never satis) this proper$. !ese knots are called wild knots4.” !e Surrealists were fascinated by mathematical objects and shapes. !ey found something inherently poetic in their abstraction, which we tend to see as random and disconcerting. !ese linear shapes, schematic translations of thought that start from the simplest to reach the complexi$ of logical formulation, are the very expression of the mystery of shape. Indeed, no one doubts they hold meaning, esoteric to the average person, but essentially clear and demonstrative. Visualizations of a theory, a hypothesis, a system, they inscribe pure thought in space. In mathematical objects, the eye perceives something beyond the shape, an abstraction that is not disincarnation, but quite the opposite, a material expression of the immaterial. “A knot diagram can be thought of as the projected shadow of the knot over a plane surface5.” !ese projected knots the mathematician refers to are a perfect description of Othoniel’s paintings on display in the new Perrotin exhibition space. !ey are abstract figures, but based on observation of nature and its shadows. !ey invade the canvas like spurts of ink, a cold gesture that brushes the surface covered with white gold leaf. Like stained and frozen icons, these paintings are placed around the sculptures of black, amber and purple mirrors. !is series of works on canvas shows the importance of drawing, suspended movement and the distanced body in Othoniel’s work. Is the first painting not merely the shadow of a lost lover? Precious Stonewall 2014 Mirrored indian glass, wood, stainless steel 131 × 99 × 23 51 9/16 × 39 × 9 1/16 in
A new architecture of glass “!e face of the earth would be much altered if brick architecture were ousted everywhere by glass architecture. It would be as if the earth were adorned with sparkling jewels and enamels6” 8
N EW YOR K For all his apparent rigor, Othoniel is, like his knots, wild. Free to drop everything and travel to India for several months to explore the country’s glassmaking tradition. !is trip was the only way for him to work in Firozabad, an Indian ci$ famous for its glassworks, where he learned the age-old techniques of the local cra"smen. He observed them working right on the floor, as close as possible to the materials and the 'rnaces. !ese moments of creation, born of this close physical contact between the molten glass and the glassblower suffering in the sweltering heat, moved him deeply. India changed everything he thought he knew about glassmaking. Ever since this memorable experience, he has created giant walls of glass bricks built using Indian techniques. !ese abstract, monochrome works stem from his observation of the bricks piled up along the roadsides of India. !e artist saw these brick monoliths as monuments bearing the hope of their owners, a symbol of their dreams to one day build their own homes. Today in New York, Othoniel exhibits his Precious Stonewalls, sculptures bordering on radical architecture. !ese walles-in spaces, his Blue Brick Road of 17 meters long and his Grotta Azzurra pay a poetic homage to the historic Stonewall demonstrations on Christopher Street and condemn the silence that still threatens the meaning of this worldwide march that began in NYC in the beginning of the 70’s. "e marvelous real !is desire for gatherings, architecture and utopic monuments that foster dialogue and encounters is something the artist would like to reflect upon throughout his exhibition with the students of NYU and the support of the Public Art Fund. By converting one of the gallery rooms into a workshop, he would like to raise the question that haunts him today at a time when the world seems to be falling apart: how can we re-enchant the world? He wonders what happened the day a"er the Tower of Babel fell and millions of bricks were le" sca%ered on the ground. What did the people do? What did they rebuild and what should we rebuild in their wake?
1. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Le Système de l’idéalisme transcendantal, trad. de l’allemand par Ch. Dubois, Louvain, Peeters, coll. Bibliothèque philosophique de Louvain, 1978. 2. James Lee Byars, Gianni Va%imo& Rudi Fuchs, James Lee Byars – !e Palace of Good Luck, ed. The Knot of Shame #1 2016 Ink on white gold leaf, lithographic monotype on canvas 140 × 105 x 5.5 cm 55 1/8 × 41 5/16 × 2 3/16 in
Castello di Rivoli - Museo d’arte contemporanea, Rivoli, Turin, 1989. 3. Jean-Michel Othoniel and Aubin Arroyo, Nudos Salvajes, Edition Othoniel, Paris, 2017. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Paul Scheerbart, L’Architecture de verre (1914), translated from the German by P. Galissaire, Circé, Poche, 2013, p. 52.
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Artie Vierkant Opening Saturday March 3, 4pm - 8pm March 3 – April 15
Perrotin New York presents the first exhibition of Artie Vierkant at the gallery. !e New York-based artist’s works challenge the distinctions between object and document, between material and immaterial, and between authorship and proprie$. Vierkant’s work spans a varie$ of media, commonly intermingling photographic or sculptural techniques with unconventional materials ranging from circulated jpegs to patents and trademarks. Central to this pursuit is the artist’s assertion that an object’s physical manifestation is no more or less consequential than its representations. For Vierkant, the representation itself can exist “without reference to the ‘original’”, and we can no longer identi) anything as an “original copy”. !is is most evident in his series, Image Objects, ongoing since 2011. !ese works are made as prints using contemporary commercial printing technologies, usually those commonly applied for advertising and luxury signage. Subsequently the works are documented in photographic images which are harshly, abstractly retouched, o"en to the point that the original object is more or less unrecognizable and the space of installation itself appears blended with the object. !e documentation of the works becomes a work in its own right, and object and image each a part of the overall work, calling into question the abili$ of the one to supersede the other. Writing for Artforum, critic Brian Droitcour, has explained this approach as such: “Vierkant goes beyond leveling the hierarchy of original and copy. He rejects the distinction altogether, recognizing the JPEG and the sculpture as equally important modes of representation. […] Conceptualism dematerialized the art object at a time when it had come to rely heavily on printed reproduction and critical language. A half century on, the conditions of art’s dissemination have changed. Vierkant’s work epitomizes an art etiolated by so"ware rather than by discourse.” Vierkant’s work has been presented in exhibitions including those at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Westfälischer Kunstverein, 12
the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Beijing, and forthcoming exhibitions at La Panacée, Montpellier France (curated by Nicolas Bourriaud); and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. His writing has appeared in October Journal and other publications and has been translated and republished in multiple languages, including French, Japanese, and Croatian. He has presented his work and writing in public lectures including those held at the Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthalle Wien, the International Center of Photography, and the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum. 13
Image Object Monday 28 September 2015 1:19PM (Westfaelischer) 2015 Print on aluminum composite panel 165.1 × 165.1 cm 65 × 65 in Next double-page: Installation view from Image Objects series 2017
76 R U E D E TU R E N N E, 75003
Johan Creten Opening Wednesday January 10, 4 - 7 pm January 10 – March 10
Josh Sperling Opening Wednesday January 10, 4 - 7 pm January 10 – February 24
Lee Bae Opening Saturday March 17, 4 - 9 pm March 17 – May 26
Paul Pfeiffer Opening Saturday March 17, 4 - 9 pm March 17 – May 26
Ma"hew Ronay Opening Saturday March 17, 4 - 9 pm March 17 – May 26
PAR I S
Johan Creten Sunrise / Sunset Opening Wednesday January 10, 4 - 7 pm January 10 – March 10 Johan Creten is considered a precursor of the ceramics revival in contemporary art, alongside Thomas Schütte and in the wake of Lucio Fontana. !rough his use of clay, his proven knowledge of the materials, his care'l a%ention to glazing, and his thoroughly physical grasp of the medium, he restored ceramics to majestic grace and paved the way for many young contemporary artists. !e work of Johan Creten raises ceramics from a poor relation to a noble art. Johan Creten’s œuvre is not governed by Venusian beau$ alone. As a result, some of his major pieces, in darker, murkier tones, like the enchanting Odore di Femmina, betray the political bent of his work, filled with a desire to probe the ambivalences and tragedies of History, the hours of darkness and days of gloom. As such, two recent and ambitious exhibitions—”CERAMIX” at La Maison Rouge in Paris, and “La Traversée/The Crossing” at the CRAC (Regional Center for Contemporary Art) in Sète—focused on these more politically-motivated pieces produced from the late eighties up to the present, tackling the social sphere and confronting the viewer with the immensi$ of our shared sorrows. For his upcoming exhibition at Perrotin in January, new monumental bronzes will dialogue with some of his early pieces like !e Gate (2001) or C’est dans ma Nature (2001). Alongside Madame Bu"erfly (1991), an especially political piece produced in the United States, several eloquent photographs will be presented of these projects conceived to bandage the wounds and explore the cité, in the ancient and modern sense of the word.
Aus Dem Serail 2016-2017 Blister glaze on modelled glazed stoneware, high-fired 89 × 67.5 × 8 cm 35 × 26 5/8 × 3 1/8 in
Presented for the first time in New York in 2015, !e Price of Freedom will be a centerpiece of the Parisian exhibition. !e monumental bronze takes on 'll meaning, or at least a different meaning, when placed alongside the recent series of portraits Creten created as a set with incredible intensi$ and coherence. Filled with mysterious ambigui$ and “disturbing strangeness” (Sigmund Freud), the veiled women (Vierge d’Aleppo, 2014–2015) evoke confinement 18
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PAR I S and the permanency of age-old preoccupations. In taking up Mozart’s theme of Aus dem Serail (2016–2017), does Creten not mean to show the extent to which the polysemy of the East has always been a motive of dreams, a machine churning out projections and fascinations? As an admirer of Antiqui$, the silence of marble and the mystery of bronze, Johan Creten is a champion of “Slow Art”; his works reveal themselves slowly, they require time. !ey must be visited thoroughly, supremely, using both the eyes and the feet. Contemplation and convolution are crucial, as we are reminded by his Points d’observation/Viewpoints, which, much like bollards or mooring posts, anchor the viewers and demand time, hindsight and distance—both visual and critical. !e exhibition will present spectacular pieces such as the monumental bronze De Gier (2015–2017), alongside more intimate, confidential works like Vulvas or the series of photographs C’est dans ma nature. From Wargames to !e Strip, each artwork is an exploration of our relationships with the world—physical and mental, real and imaginary—filled with fantasies, obsessions and flashes of brilliance. “Sunrise / Sunset” will move us by its solar beau$. !is new presentation of Johan Creten’s œuvre will show us a commi%ed and lucid artist—lucid because he is commi%ed—whose works are epiphanies of deep-seated beau$. For that is the risk of any aesthetic and political project: staring straight into the sun o"en burns the eyes and skin. Conversation with Johan Creten and Colin Lemoine Saturday January 13, 2018 – 3 - 4 pm Perrotin Salle de Bal – 60 rue de Turenne, Paris Free entrance, subject to availabili$
The Price of Freedom 2015-2017 Patinated bronze, lost-wax casting 145 × 194 × 59 cm 57 1/8 × 76 3/8 × 23 1/4 in
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Josh Sperling Chasing Rainbows Opening Wednesday January 10, 4 - 7 pm January 10 – February 24 Perrotin Paris is proud to present “Chasing Rainbows,” Josh Sperling’s first exhibition with the gallery. !e exhibition brings together a number of new works by the New York-based artist: composites —or shaped canvases and plywood panels—a series of monochrome canvas reliefs, and a large-scale installation. Sperling’s dynamic clusters of brightly colored forms blur the lines between painting and sculpture, image and object. !ough each shaped canvas is distinct, it relies on other forms in the field for compositional coherence and energy. O"en asymmetrical and happily off-kilter, a cluster is always satis)ing in its surprising arrangement. In Poppycock (2017), three ovals compete for prominence in the center of the composition, shuffling and re-shuffling before settling into a makeshift pile. A maroon arch buttresses them, cradling them into stillness. These snaking forms—“squiggles”—appear throughout Sperling’s work and act, alternately, as instigators and appeasers of movement: the maelstrom of forms that characterizes Sperling’s work. To execute a single “squi&le,” sheets of plywood are laid on top of each other, resembling a topographical model, before they are covered in canvas and painted over in Sperling’s signature palate of saturated, sometimes clashing colors. !e ridges of the wooden armature, visible through the canvas, add sculptural contrast to Sperling’s interest in flatness —of color, of form.
From Now to the Eons of Oblivion (detail) 2017 Acrylic on canvas Variable dimensions
In Lovey Dovey (2017), a blue trident eclipses a pink orb. !e overlap is rendered in a marbling of the two tones. So intense is the collision of shape and color, force against force, that the surface collapses and the colors co-mingle. Over this eclipse of forms, a single curve arches like an eyebrow in an expression of alarm, or like a crescent moon presiding over the collision and framing the event. Dots, one red and one white, act as a kind of punctuation. !ey are the only seemingly stable forms in an otherwise mercurial landscape of shape, color, and relation. Everything appears on the verge of balance, suspended precariously before it might tumble and fall into a new configuration. Motion seems imminent. 22
PAR I S Sperling’s range of influences is broad. Frank Stella and his shaped canvases are clear predecessors for the meticulously cra"ed supports over which Sperling stretches his canvases. In this, Sperling resembles another American abstractionist, Ellsworth Kelly, whose signature hard-edge shapes took near-sculptural form in his later work; no longer the subject, they became the object itself, dictating its edges and its projection into space. Sperling picks up where his precursors le" off, combining the concerns of painting— color and composition—with the spatial potential of sculpture. Whereas Kelly and Stella’s forms are unwaveringly stark, Sperling’s are sinuous and surprising. !e artist cites “Googie” signage, the exuberant graphic fad of the 50s —Jetsons-y asterisks and boomerangs—as an influence. Sperling’s forms communicate a comparable upli" of feeling, both in color and in contour. Also in Sperling’s aesthetic lineage is the short-lived Memphis 'rniture trend of the 80s. (Sperling was born in ‘84.) !at movement’s postmodern all-things-go design philosophy disavowed “good taste” and touted improbable shapes and outrageous colors instead. Sperling is as steeped in design as he is in art history, and borrows from both. More canonical sources like Jean Arp’s kidney-shaped wall-reliefs, for instance, or the motion lines surrounding Keith Haring’s figures are also echoed in Sperling’s vocabulary of forms. !is diversi$ of associations is to Sperling’s credit: his abili$ to marshal a great number of varied references de"ly and seamlessly into a single work and a total oeuvre. He is capable of reverence without conceding originality or energy. The works in this exhibition are no exception, as they straddle painting and sculpture daringly, venturing from the wall and intruding into the space joy'lly. Danny Kopel October 2017
Lovey Dovey 2017 Acrylic paint on canvas and plywood 96.5 × 86.4 cm 38 × 34 in
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Lee Bae Black Mapping Opening Saturday March 17, 4 - 9 pm March 17 – May 26 Perrotin Paris presents the first exhibition of Lee Bae at the gallery. Of Lee Bae’s works that we have seen in the past few years, his black and creamy white paintings done in acrylic are the most prevalent. But we are less familiar with his earlier works, those of the late 90s-early 2000s, which, at a time when he was not as well known as today, were exhibited only rarely, and some not at all. Yet these works, which could be referred to as from his “charcoal period”, in addition to their astounding power, correspond to a seminal moment in the artist’s career. !ey coincide with his arrival in Paris and mark a decisive turning point in his creative process with the discovery and use of what was a new material for him: charcoal. As Lee Bae has o"en stated, there were several factors that led him to use charcoal when he came to France in 1990. First and foremost was the fact that it reminded him of his roots, the world of India ink, calligraphy, and a deep grounding in Korean tradition with its strong symbolism and poetic weight. 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 tonali$.
Issu du feu (detail) 2000 Charcoal on plywood 163 × 130 cm 64 3/16 × 51 3/16 in
Charcoal proved to be a power'l source of energy, both literally and figuratively, a concentration of life. Lee Bae would assert the presence of this raw material, play on its physicali$, revive its existential dimension and draw out all the aspects, using pieces of various kinds to produce sculptures, installations and paintings. For the la%er, the artist sharpened, juxtaposed, glued and smoothed his shards of charcoal. He worked the surface, revealed black highlights, and played with shimmering effects to create a mosaic of shadow, light and gradation. It is upon viewing these artworks that we understand the subtle$ of the link with the period that followed, and how Lee Bae shi"ed the focus of his work from the planari$ of black to the depth of black. 26
PAR I S In the early 2000s, Lee Bae felt compelled to move away from charcoal: one day, as if he were making a performance or a happening, he threw the powder and the pieces around him up into the air. Perhaps it was his way of le%ing the charcoal go up in smoke? From that point on, and again with great technical skill, he began a new series that he is still working on today, pursuing his exploration of black, but now playing on contrasts with white. And so, it is still all about black. A quest for black like a quest for the Holy Grail. !e black in which he strives to find nuances, vibrations, densities and depths. Unlike Pierre Soulages, who o"en said that what interested him about black was the way it projected light off the canvas, Lee Bae seeks to plunge into black, dig into it and magni) its properties, as much by playing with surface effects and reflections as by exploring its abysses. Lee Bae gives black a plural expression to invent new territories of black, whole continents of black, and thus chart out a map of black. !ese works recall Lee Bae’s great interest in the material and his slow, methodical way of working it and leading us through it. !ey bring to the fore a spiritual quest and a dimension of time that is omnipresent in his creative approach: the time inherent in the very history of charcoal and the way he works it. We no longer see anything but these black masses filled with extreme tension, a tremendous energy, an incredible densi$ that invariably draws and captures our gaze. Like a bo%omless black well, in which we each find the depth we are willing to see and the vertigo we are prepared to feel. Like a black hole in the astrophysical sense of the word with ma%er so dense and compact that the black plunges infinitely into blackness. A beyond-black, in sum. Henri-François Debailleux October 2017
Lee Bae will have a solo show at Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, from March 24, 2018.
Issu du feu 2000 Charcoal on plywood 210 × 110 cm each 82 11/16 × 43 5/16 in each
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Paul Pfeiffer Opening Saturday March 17, 4 - 9 pm March 17 – May 26
Perrotin Paris is pleased to announce a new solo exhibition of Paul Pfeiffer. Known for his innovative manipulation of digital media, Pfeiffer recasts the visual language of popular spectacle to examine how images shape our perception of ourselves and the world. !is exhibition presents works created between 2015 and 2018 from several ongoing series, illustrating the breadth of the artist’s practice. On view is Pfeiffer’s for$-eight minute multi-channel audio and video installation, !ree Figures In A Room (2015-2016). !e work features the televised footage of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao’s highly publicized and most lucrative boxing match at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, in May 2015, billed as “!e Fight of the Century.” Removing the fight’s original audio, Pfeiffer replaces it with an eerily quiet Foley1 soundtrack that isolates the physical exertion of the boxers and the movements of the stadium audience: the rhythmic thud of footsteps; the acute smack of leather on flesh; the hissing snarl of exhausted breath; the mammoth roar of a thousand spectators, winnowed to merely a few truncated applauses. A second video channel shows the sound technicians, the Foley artists, as they distill and recreate these sound effects in their studio using a myriad of props. Mirroring the boxers’ athleticism and focus, the Foley channel plays in sync with the fight channel, each placed on opposing sides in the gallery space. Audio playback alternates from one channel to the other, sparring throughout the room and enveloping the viewer in the meticulous process of sound production.
Three Figures In A Room 2015-17 Video still
Desiderata (Debora) 2018 Video still
Also on view are five new works from Pfeiffer’s Desiderata series, in which the artist manipulates televised footage from !e Price is Right, the longest running game show in American history, having debuted in 1972. Digitally erasing the show’s host, prizes, and other narrative trappings, Pfeiffer hones in on the facial expressions and body language of the game show’s contestants, elucidating their shared human vulnerabili$. Recontextualized as a Seussical landscape of lurid color and kaleidoscopic proportion, the absurdi$ of the stage mirrors the isolation of its participants and the una%ainable folly of their material 30
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PAR I S desires. Emp$ shelves and prefab props bear evidence of decades of use, underscoring a sense of systematic, constructed false promise. In another series, Pfeiffer transforms the image of Michael Jackson into a “creature of bristling symmetry. Titled Live Evil, it su&ests a kind of weapon-twirling Kabuki cyborg or a Cubist bodhisa%va and is superbly cross-cultural and in a visual, instantly accessible manner.”2 !e recordings are from Jackson’s massively produced HIStory World Tour, a%ended by approximately 4.5 million fans between 1996 and 1997. !e works show a headless Jackson in an iridescent, shimmering suit dancing onstage, his figure mirrored such that only the contours of the body as well as his lan* appendages remain. !e dissociated man performs to the viewers’ demand, moving in a distorted rendition of the artist’s signature choreography. In another room of the exhibition are three works from Pfeiffer’s ongoing Caryatid series, begun in 2003. Screened on lustrous chromed television sets of varying sizes, the HD videos show slow-motion excerpts of boxing matches in which the a%acking opponents have been digitally removed. Cast into a torpid yet tense solo performance, the remaining boxer invites close scrutiny. Obscure corporeal details are brought to the fore, highlighting the brutali$ of impact from an invisible assault, while the work’s presentation as sculptural object serves to prompt 'rther meditative viewing. !eir title, Caryatid, refers to the classical Greek columns carved in the form of draped maidens, who, according to legend, stand at the Acropolis in penance for an ancient treason. Nora Woodin
Desiderata (Dot) 2018 Two channel video still Desiderata (Dooy) 2018 Two channel video still
Paul Pfeiffer was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and currently lives and works in New York Ci$. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2001), MIT’s List Visual Arts Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA (2003), the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2005), MUSAC León, Spain (2008), the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2009), the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, USA (2010), and was the subject of a retrospective at Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Germany in 2011. Pfeiffer’s works have also been included in international, large-scale exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, Biennale of Sydney, Busan Biennale, Cairo Biennale, and Whitney Biennial. Past solo exhibition in galleries include Perrotin Hong Kong in 2015 and Paula Cooper New York in 2016. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship and the Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney Museum. !e artistis the 32
focus of MCA Screen – a project room exhibition at MCA Chicago through May 20, 2018, as well as a solo pavilion at Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil in the Fall of 2018. Participation in forthcoming group exhibitions include “Private Lives” at Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels, Belgium; “A Beast, A God, And A Line,” for Dhaka Art Summit 2018, Bangladesh; “Michael Jackson: On the Wall” at !e National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; and “Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to “Today” at ICA Boston, USA. 1. “!e majori$ of the sounds that make up a [film] scene has to be recorded and inserted a"er production by a team of sound designers. !e art of recreating sound effects on a stage for a film is known as foley art.” – Knapp, Lauren, !e Films Are Alive With the Art of Foley, PBS News Hour, February 18, 2011 2. Smith, Roberta, ART REVIEW; A Cornucopia of Cultural Exchange, Beginning With a Martial Arts Hero, !e New York Times, November 28, 2003.
33
PAR I S
Matthew Ronay Ramus Opening Saturday March 17, 4 - 9 pm March 17 – May 26 Perrotin proudly presents Ma%hew Ronay’s debut exhibition in Paris, also his first solo show with the gallery. !e last time I visited Ma%hew Ronay’s studio, I found him si%ing on a chair in the center of the room. He was wearing a pair of royal blue basketball shoes with an overlaid white mesh pa%ern and a mil* translucent sole. To his right sat an identical pair, similarly worn and arranged in exactly the same position as the pair on his feet, as if an invisible Ma%hew were si%ing on an invisible chair to his immediate le". !e Jordan Horizon, Ronay explained, is a hybrid, a mutation within the Jordan species—combining the clean lines of the Jordan Future with the distinctive lobular sole of the Jordan 13. He liked this variation so much that he got two identical pairs and, rather than se%ing one aside for later, put both to immediate use. Ronay works from drawings—deceptively simple sketches in a small notebook he keeps with him at all times. !ey are drawings of intertwined bodies, of limbs and protuberances, cuticles, peduncles, carbuncles, calcifications, intersections of hard and so" ma%er, barnacles, burls, tumors, phantom limbs and vestigial appendages. !ese are not drawings of sculptures, they are drawings that become sculptures, which is to say they are neither plans nor diagrams, but something more free form, more intuitive, unburdened by regard for the structural particulars of the sculptures they will come to describe.
Sexual Trimorphism (detail) 2017 Basswood, dye, gouache, cotton, flocking, steel, plastic, polycarbonate 54.6 × 61 × 53.3 cm 21 1/2 × 24 × 21 in
Once the drawings are complete, Ronay switches authorial modes and begins the task of deciphering his own marks, of reading each sketch as a diagram for a sculpture. At this transitional moment in a process that is literally bicameral, work moves from the studio’s clean room, piled with notebooks and hardcover monographs, to a smaller dir# room where a block of basswood waits to be hewn, gouged, rasped, scorped, shaved, sanded, pocked, flocked, dyed and dimpled. Ronay works alone and on one sculpture at a time, carrying each piece from conception to completion before starting on the next. Translating each sculpture from drawing to object requires solving problems of balance, resolving impossible perspectives, interpreting texture 34
PAR I S and adding color (this la%er detail being of particular importance because despite the fact that Ronay uses color as well as any artist working today, he draws only in black and white). At different points in our lives, Ma%hew and I had more or less the same job making maque%es for architects. Generally these models would represent an isolated element, a window section or a corner detail that was too complicated to be resolved on paper—a condition that needed to be seen in three dimensions to be understood. Years later, I learned that the word architect derives from the Greek arkhitéktōn meaning “master builder.” !e original term described a trade that incorporated design and construction into a single cra", but over time, the master builders stopped building. Today, architects are experts of representational modes—drawings, models, renderings and animations—the illustrations of structure, not the structures themselves. The architect steps away from her design as it becomes form. I would never describe Ronay as an architect, but the shi" in the meaning of the word presents a model for thinking about a working process that sits on both of sides of this e$mological ri". On the one hand, Ronay is a master builder, presiding over the germination of each sculpture in every phase of its creation. On the other hand, he allows for a fissure to exist within the process where he can work ideas out on paper unencumbered by practical concerns and then transition into the role of interpreting his own diagrams, of figuring out how to bring those drawings to life in a three-dimensional form. How to make wood behave like charcoal? When to make plexiglas so" and basswood hard? Where to find the bones inside of the blobs? Ronay’s drawings are automatic and intuitive—they flow naturally from his own body, from internalized habits of composition and muscle memory. His sculptures, in contrast, are meticulous, executed with exacting precision and exquisite technique. His impossibly kerf-less tongues and grooves bewilder anyone who has ever worked with wood. Still, despite their extravagances, each sculpture is inevitably faith'l to the simple drawing that preceded it. For his upcoming show at Perrotin, Ma%hew Ronay is drawing at a different scale, working on larger paper that allows for a different kind of physical interaction with the drawing. Freed from the confines of the spiral notebook, new gestures come from the shoulder or the arm rather than the hand. !ere is more of his body in each drawing and new variations in line weight, texture and detail 36
emerge. It will be several months before we know exactly what form these new sculptures (incomplete at the time of writing) will take as Ronay moves back and forth from drawing to object, from clean room to dir$, from shoe to identical shoe. Justin Beal October 2017
Move, Swallow, Breathe 2017 Basswood, dye, gouache, cotton, flocking, steel, plastic 28.6 × 30.5 × 10.15 cm 11 1/4 × 12 × 4 in
37
17F, 50 C O N NAU G HT R OAD C E NTR AL 香港中環干諾道中50號17樓
Izumi Kato Opening Friday January 19, 6 - 8 pm January 19 – March 17 開幕酒會 1月19日(週五)| 6 - 8 pm 展覽日期 1月19日 – 3月17日
KAWS Opening Monday March 26, 11 am - 7 pm March 26 – May 19 開幕酒會 3月26日(週一)| 11 am - 7 pm 展覽日期 3月26日 – 5月19日
H ON G KON G
Izumi Kato Opening Friday January 19, 6 - 8 pm January 19 – March 17
Following exhibitions in Hong Kong, Paris and New York, Perrotin is pleased to present Izumi Kato’s second solo exhibition in Hong Kong. Kato returns to the Asian hub with new works a"er four years during which he set up a coastal studio near a long strip of a reclaimed landfill laden with irregularly shaped granite pieces that inspired him. !is exhibition consolidates almost two years of Kato’s artistic practice, with new materials incorporated into his creation. !e latest Untitled series utilizes a $pe of common granite, selected from the shore, unaltered or unchiseled. Kato then selects the most suitable shape and pa%ern before developing the color pale%e for the specific piece. !is a%empt is novel in the sense that it is the first time a $pe of material has been brought into the creation process not for its 'nctional use, but rather, for its natural aesthetics. In this case, the physical shape and form of the stones have been le" pristine, and has influenced the artistic creation process. !is process reinvigorates the essence of the “Found Object” (objet trouvé) movement, however, there is also a layer of Japanese aesthetics defined by the innate quali$ that has become a part of the work. !is process and outcome have already been seen from some of the artist’s past works in which antique 'rniture had been selected to seat or serve as a stand for his wooden sculptures. A selection of his drawings are also placed in vintage frames that have been collected by the artist from various sources.
Untitled 2017 Stone, wood, acrylic, iron, leather 80 × 13 × 13 cm 31 1/2 × 5 1/8 × 5 1/8 in
Kato produces his canvas works solely with his fingers wearing rubber gloves, or with a spatula on occasions, but he paints the sculptures with brushes. Kato believes the granite pieces have been built up with time. While he chooses the granite according to his imagination, in return, the granite also inspires the artist with various shapes and compositions. Unlike previously used natural material—tree trunks that were chopped and carved, and so" vinyl that was molded—granite is the only medium to date that is selected and painted, but not shaped. !ere is no additional masonry work to shape the stones. 40
H ON G KON G While we will see the use of granite for the first time in Kato’s works, we will also see a series of recently composed paintings in new configurations, consisting of a few panels. In these works, the figure, which has been the subject of Kato’s paintings for the past twen$ years, are truncated. Different parts of the figure afloat on a contracted background in different hues and levels of saturation, are combined to present a rather modern aesthetic. !is exhibition also introduces a series of drawings, some of them which involve replacing color pencil lines with sewing threads, ultimately creating more depth and thus forming an additional “dimension” on the drawings. !e three-dimensional “pencil line” not only enriches the image but also su&ests movement. !roughout this exhibition the artist continues to explore the possibili$ of new mediums, as well as the relationship between the material and object. !is combination stimulates unique visual representations and paves ways for a myriad of opportunities to come. Kato’s works are currently shown in the Japanese contemporary art group exhibition “Japanorama. New vision on art since 1970” curated by Yuko Hasegawa at Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, on view until March 5, 2018.
Untitled 2017 Stone, wood, acrylic, iron, leather 56 × 10 × 10 cm 22 1/16 × 3 15/16 × 3 15/16 in
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H ON G KON G TOKYO
KAWS HONG KONG Opening Monday March 26, 11 am - 7 pm March 26 – May 19 TOKYO Opening Thursday March 22, 5 - 7 pm March 22 – May 12
Perrotin is proud to announce simultaneous exhibitions in its To#o and Hong Kong spaces by the renowned and multifaceted American artist KAWS. Continuing in the tradition of Pop Art, his influential work crosses painting, sculpture and printmaking along with fashion, merchandise and toy production while drawing upon art history and popular culture. In his paintings, KAWS deconstructs his appropriation of iconic characters into forms that draw on the tradition of abstract painting.
Next double-page: WAITING 2017 Bronze, paint 178.4 × 85 × 72 cm 70 1/4 × 33 7/16 × 28 3/8 in GOOD SUMMER 2017 Acrylic on canvas 213.4 × 548.6 cm 7 × 18 ft
KAWS is a product of and an answer to the Pop legacy le" behind by famous progenitors such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg, and he shares ground with the Japanese eclectic film and print maker Keiichi Tanaami and the American satirical painter Peter Saul. Together with Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, KAWS spearheads the contemporary Pop contingent.1 As both disciples and rebels they have absorbed the lesson of historical Pop art, and have revised it in light of contemporary societal shi"s. Pop is in fact a movement, which was never canonised as such by its makers (most artists re'te categorically the Pop label), but was always premised on a constant engagement with the everyday. This makes it extremely malleable and fluid, capable of constantly reinventing itself according to the socio-political reali$ in which it operates. As such it has the potential of being more accessible to a wider public, yet remains firmly rooted in the vision of the individual artist. KAWS’ practice is emblematic of this stance. He sets up a cast of faithful characters, with names such as COMPANION and CHUM, and sets them loose in different fields. 44
[…] Still firmly entrenched in a Pop legacy, COMPANION—as does most of KAWS’ work—provides a glimpse into Pop’s contemporary evolution. No longer simply li"ing iconic images and reinterpreting them, familiar characters undergo an overhaul and become something other. They are transformed into KAWS characters, depersonalised and repersonalised, ready to conquer the worlds of commerce and fine art. By personalising the quintessential Pop icon, KAWS converts a branded figure into his own brand ambassador. Keith Haring with his radiant baby and Jeff Koons with his stainless steel bunny had devised a similar approach to Pop, moving away from pre-existing iconic figures and devising a set of unique characters to carry the flag of their trademark. Flavia Frigeri
Extract of KAWSIFICATION OF THE UNIVERSE published in “KAWS - Yorkshire Sculpture Park” Flavia Frigeri is an Art Historian and Curator, currently Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate in the History of Art department at Universi$ College London. Previously she served as a Curator, International Art (2014-16) and Assistant Curator (2011-14) at Tate Modern, where she worked on exhibitions, acquisitions and permanent collection displays.
KAWS (b. 1974, Jersey Ci$, New Jersey; lives and works in Brooklyn), has exhibited internationally in major museums. His most recent solo exhibitions include KAWS: WHERE THE END STARTS at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Yuz Museum, Shanghai; and Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Longside Gallery (2016). His work has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Brooklyn Museum, New York, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga, Spain, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the High Art Museum, Atlanta.
1. For a discussion on Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami’s relationship with Pop art see: Jack Banlows*, Alison M. Gingeras and Catherine Wood ed., Pop Life: Art in a Material World. London: Tate Publishing, 2009.
45
1F, 5 PALPAN- G I L J O N G N O - G U 서울시 종로구 팔판길 5 1층
Lionel Estève Opening Wednesday January 24, 5 - 7 pm January 24 – March 10 오프닝 리셉션 1. 24 (수)ㅣ5 - 7 pm 전시기간 1. 24 – 3. 10, 2018
Leslie Hewi" Opening Wednesday March 21, 5 - 7 pm March 21 – May 5 오프닝 리셉션 3. 21 (수)ㅣ5 - 7 pm 전시기간 3. 21 – 5. 5, 2018
S E OU L
Lionel Estève Narcisse Opening Wednesday January 24, 5 - 7 pm January 24 – March 10 Perrotin Seoul is delighted to present a solo exhibition of Lionel Estève, following his recent presentation at Sèvres, Cité de la Céramique, France. !e exhibition comprises new works, each one unique, designed and produced at the historical workshops. !e Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres is one of the principal European porcelain manufactories. Founded in 1740, it was the supplier for royal, then imperial and finally national orders for very high quali$ objects. For over four years and in close collaboration with Sèvres’ artisans, Lionel Estève elaborated large beveled porcelain plaques, whose platinum surfaces are disrupted by color'l shockwaves. !e la%er well illustrate the rich pale%e of enamels and crystallizations available at Sèvres, whose excellence relies on the exceptional quali$ of its materials manufactured on-site according to ancestral techniques preserved and perfected since the eighteenth century. Lionel Estève’s sculptural oeuvre focuses on nature and the emotional relations we maintain with the natural world. His works created at Sèvres vibrantly demonstrate the artist’s color'l vocabulary in which natural elements, suspended in time and space, are saturated with pigments.
Untitled (Mirror) 2016 Porcelain, colored underglaze, crystallizations, platinum 70 × 70 cm 27 9/16 × 27 9/16 in
!e porcelain creations thus become shimmering liquid surfaces, testimony to a time when man could only contemplate his image when reflected upon the water’s surface. For Lionel Estève, these objects are “pieces of puddles beneath the rain, torrential fragments, reflections above the abyss… there where man has sought an answer to the question ‘who am I?’” A very special thanks to La Manufacture de Sèvres.
Next double-page: Untitled (Mirror) (detail) 2015 Porcelain, colored underglaze, crystallizations, platinum 31 × 31 cm 12 3/16 × 12 3/16 in
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51
S E OU L
Leslie Hewitt Opening Wednesday March 21, 5 - 7 pm March 21 – May 5
Perrotin Seoul is pleased to announce the first exhibition of New York based artist Leslie Hewi% in Asia. Leslie Hewi%’s photographs document temporary still life structures that combine political, social and personal material within sculptural compositions, repeatedly re-arranged and recorded over time to capture the most subtle shi"s in perception. !rough photography’s abili$ to document, Hewi% dissects the representation of a specific situation: rather than freezing an isolated moment, it is the passage of time that is made visible through the variation of daylight on walls, objects and floors. Hewi%’s practice responds to an introspective questioning: how can a photograph made in restrained studio conditions with the permutation of limited elements reflect something larger than what is actually pictured? “Leslie Hewi"’s sculpturally constructed photographs address photography’s impact on the visual and physical dynamics of the act of seeing [...]. Her work explore(s) the interplay between public and private interests and the personal and the political as they relate to the photographic image.” Dominic Molon1
Untitled (Candid) 2013 Digital chromogenic print in custom maple frame 132.7 × 158.1 × 15.2 cm 52 1/4 × 62 1/4 × 6 in Next double-page: Installation view of “Fond Illusions” at Perrotin New York 2017
Leslie Hewi% recently held solo exhibitions at the Sculpture Center, New York, USA; the Power Plant, Toronto, Canada, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA, !e Menil Collection, Houston, USA, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and was a Radcliffe Fellow for Advanced Studies at Harvard Universi$. Hewi%’s work is included in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA, the Solomon R. Gu&enheim Museum, New York, USA, the Los Angeles Coun$ Museum, Los Angeles, USA, and !e San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in San Francisco, USA. 1. Dominic Molon, Leslie Hewi% Sudden Glare of the Sun, Contemporary Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri, 2014
54
P I R AM I D E B U I LD I N G, 1F, 6-6-9 R O P PO N G I, M I NATO -K U, 10 6-0032 10 6-0032 東京都港区六本木6-6-9 ピラミデビル1F
Hernan Bas Opening Thursday January 18, 5 - 7 pm January 18 – March 11 オープニング 1月18日(木) | 5 - 7 pm 展覧会 1月18日(木) ‒ 3月11日(土)
KAWS Opening Thursday March 22, 5 - 7 pm March 22 – May 12 オープニング 3月22日(木) | 5 - 7 pm 展覧会 3月22日(木) ‒ 5月12日(土)
TOKYO
Hernan Bas Insects from Abroad Opening Thursday January 18, 5 - 7 pm January 18 – March 11 Perrotin To*o is proud to present an exhibition of recent paintings by American artist Hernan Bas. !e exhibition is the sixth exhibition of the artist with the gallery and his first solo show at Perrotin To*o. Bas’s paintings fluctuate between past and present and between the pictorial convention of landscape and abstraction. “[Bas] does approach painting as a place to get lost —for his protagonists, for him, and for us, the paintings’ viewers. Representational landscapes and abstract color fields are both good places to lose oneself; combined, they are profoundly disorienting”1 Hernan Bas’s expressionist and highly detailed figurative paintings are openly inspired by late-nineteenth-century decadent art and literature, as well as the concurrent symbolist and decorative s$le of the French group Les Nabis. While they are aesthetically grounded in the iconography of the male androgynous dandy, the young protagonists of his oneiric visions are usually portrayed alone or in small groups within descriptions of pure flânerie. Whether confined in the intimacy of a genre scene or lost in the vertigo of a dense, lush, romantic-like landscape, they inhabit a fantasized world of implicit eroticism and ambiguous sensuali$. Always appearing as if suspended in time, between adolescence and adulthood, they embody the fragile in-between state that the artist refers to as “fag limbo.” With a flamboyant pale%e and a refined touch, Hernan Bas overall masterly revisits and reinterprets all the categories of classical painting from a seemingly melancholic yet o"en humorous and wi%y, homoerotic perspective. Hernan Bas was born in 1978 in Miami, Florida. He lives and works in Miami and Detroit. Hernan Bas in his studio 2017
1. Jonathan Griffin, A Boy’s Own Compendium published in “Hernan Bas”, Rizzoli New York, 2014.
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61
TOKYO H ON G KON G
KAWS TOKYO Opening Thursday March 22, 5 - 7 pm March 22 – May 12 HONG KONG Opening Monday March 26, 11 am - 7 pm March 26 – May 19
Perrotin is proud to announce simultaneous exhibitions in its To#o and Hong Kong spaces by the renowned and multifaceted American artist KAWS. Continuing in the tradition of Pop Art, his influential work crosses painting, sculpture and printmaking along with fashion, merchandise and toy production while drawing upon art history and popular culture. In his paintings, KAWS deconstructs his appropriation of iconic characters into forms that draw on the tradition of abstract painting.
Next double-page: Untitled 2017 183 × 305 cm 72 × 120 in
KAWS is a product of and an answer to the Pop legacy le" behind by famous progenitors such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg, and he shares ground with the Japanese eclectic film and print maker Keiichi Tanaami and the American satirical painter Peter Saul. Together with Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, KAWS spearheads the contemporary Pop contingent.1 As both disciples and rebels they have absorbed the lesson of historical Pop art, and have revised it in light of contemporary societal shi"s. Pop is in fact a movement, which was never canonised as such by its makers (most artists re'te categorically the Pop label), but was always premised on a constant engagement with the everyday. This makes it extremely malleable and fluid, capable of constantly reinventing itself according to the socio-political reali$ in which it operates. As such it has the potential of being more accessible to a wider public, yet remains firmly rooted in the vision of the individual artist. KAWS’ practice is emblematic of this stance. He sets up a cast of faithful characters, with names such as COMPANION and CHUM, and sets them loose in different fields. 62
[…] Still firmly entrenched in a Pop legacy, COMPANION—as does most of KAWS’ work—provides a glimpse into Pop’s contemporary evolution. No longer simply li"ing iconic images and reinterpreting them, familiar characters undergo an overhaul and become something other. They are transformed into KAWS characters, depersonalised and repersonalised, ready to conquer the worlds of commerce and fine art. By personalising the quintessential Pop icon, KAWS converts a branded figure into his own brand ambassador. Keith Haring with his radiant baby and Jeff Koons with his stainless steel bunny had devised a similar approach to Pop, moving away from pre-existing iconic figures and devising a set of unique characters to carry the flag of their trademark. Flavia Frigeri
Extract of KAWSIFICATION OF THE UNIVERSE published in “KAWS - Yorkshire Sculpture Park” Flavia Frigeri is an Art Historian and Curator, currently Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate in the History of Art department at Universi$ College London. Previously she served as a Curator, International Art (2014-16) and Assistant Curator (2011-14) at Tate Modern, where she worked on exhibitions, acquisitions and permanent collection displays.
KAWS (b. 1974, Jersey Ci$, New Jersey; lives and works in Brooklyn), has exhibited internationally in major museums. His most recent solo exhibitions include KAWS: WHERE THE END STARTS at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Yuz Museum, Shanghai; and Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Longside Gallery (2016). His work has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Brooklyn Museum, New York, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga, Spain, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the High Art Museum, Atlanta.
1. For a discussion on Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami’s relationship with Pop art see: Jack Banlows*, Alison M. Gingeras and Catherine Wood ed., Pop Life: Art in a Material World. London: Tate Publishing, 2009.
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ART FAI R S
AM E R I CA Zona Maco Mexico Ci! Opening February 7 February 8 - 11, 2018 "e Armory Show New York Opening March 7 March 8 - 11, 2018
E U R OPE Art Genève Opening January 31 February 1 - 4, 2018 TEFAF Maastricht Opening March 8 - 9 March 10 - 18, 2018
AS IA Art Fair To#o Opening March 8 March 9 - 11, 2018 Art Basel Hong Kong Opening March 27 - 28 March 29 - 31, 2018
AFR I CA Cape Town Art Fair Opening February 16 February 16 - 18, 2018
ARTI ST N EWS Selection of solo shows
Iván Argote
Gelitin
Takashi Murakami
“Somos Tiernos” Curated by Itzel Vargas !rough January 12, 2018 Museo Universitario Del Chopo, Mexico, Mexico
“Slight Agitation 3/4: Gelitin” Curated by Nina Folkersma !rough February 26, 2018 Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy
“Under the Radiation Falls” Curated by Ekatarina Inozemtseva !rough February 4, 2018 Garage Museum of Contemporary Art Moscow, Russia
Hans Hartung
“Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics: A Collaboration with Nobuo Tsuji and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” Curated by Anne Nishimura Morse !rough April 1, 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA
Daniel Arsham “Moving Architecture” !rough January 9, 2018 VDNH, Moscow, Russia
“Hans Hartung. Poli$ici” !rough January 7, 2018 Galleria Nazionale Dell’Umbria, Perugia, Italy
Lee Bae
Jesper Just
Solo show March 24 – June 15, 2018 Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France
“Jesper Just” !rough March 11, 2018 Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, !e Netherlands
Sophie Calle
“Jesper Just” Curated by Anisa Touati Opening February 6, 2018 Museo Anahuacalli, Coyoacán, Mexico
Sophie Calle and her guest Serena Carone “Beau doublé, Monsieur le marquis!” Curated by Sonia Voss !rough February 11, 2018 Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, France “Here lie the secrets of the visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery” A 25-year long public artwork commissioned by Creative Time !rough April 30, 2042 Green-Wood Cemetery Brooklyn, New York, USA
“Takashi Murakami: "e Deep End of the Universe” Curated by Cathleen Chaffee !rough January 28, 2018 Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, USA “Takashi Murakami: "e Octopus Eats Its Own Leg” February 3 - May 6, 2018 Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada June 10, 2018 - September 16, 2018 Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, USA
Bharti Kher “Bharti Kher: Sketchbooks and Diaries” !rough September 10, 2018 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Boston, Massachuse%s, USA “Dark Ma$er (MM)” Curated by Patricia Kamp !rough February 17, 2018 Museum Frieder Burda | Salon Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Jens Fänge
Julio Le Parc
Solo show February 6 – April 1 Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden
“Form Into Action” !rough February 4, 2018 Instituto Tomie Ohtake Museum, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Jean-Michel Othoniel Solo show May 19 - September 16, 2018 Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France
Pierre Soulages “Leidenscha% . Passion - In Focus: Pierre Soulages” !rough January 21, 2018 Museum Art.Plus, Donaueschingen, Germany
P E R R OTI N ARTI STS
Iván Argote Daniel Arsham Hernan Bas Sophie Calle Maurizio Ca$elan Chen Fei Chung Chang-Sup Johan Creten Wim Delvoye Elmgreen & Dragset Ericson & Ziegler Erró Lionel Esteve Jens Fänge Bernard Frize Gelitin Laurent Grasso Zach Harris Hans Hartung "ilo Heinzmann John Henderson Leslie Hewi$ Gregor Hildebrandt JR
Jesper Just Izumi Kato KAWS Bharti Kher Klara Kristalova Julio Le Parc Heinz Mack Farhad Moshiri Gianni Mo$i Mr. Takashi Murakami Jean-Michel Othoniel Park Seo-Bo Paul Pfeiffer Paola Pivi Claude Rutault Michael Sailstorfer Jesús Rafael Soto Pierre Soulages Aya Takano Tatiana Trouvé Xavier Veilhan Pieter Vermeersch Xu Zhen
FO R ANY P R ES S I N Q U I R I ES
communication@perrotin.com
Photography
Cover
Claire Dorn, Kei Okano, Farzad Owrang, Gerrit Schreurs & Johan Creten Studio, Guillaume Ziccarelli, D. R. © ADAGP, Paris / ARS, New York / SACK, Seoul, 2017. Courtesy the Artists & Perrotin
Front: Jean-Michel Othoniel, Tornado #1, 2016. Aluminium beads, steel. 450 × 260 × 250 cm / 177 3/16 × 102 3/8 × 98 7/16 in Back: KAWS Untitled, (detail) 2017. 183 × 305 cm / 72 × 120 in