“Souvenirs de Paris” Exhibition
Peter Freeman
This event has ended.
Peter Freeman, Inc., New York presents “Souvenirs de Paris,” a group show curated by Camille Morineau, dedicated to the artists who have shown with Peter Freeman, Inc., Paris.
In December 2013, the building adjacent to the gallery in Paris caught fire, leaving the gallery itself mostly unscathed except for the damage caused by fighting the flames. Restoring the infrastructure continues to be a slow process, and at this time we do not know when we will once again have use of the gallery space. In the meantime, we have brought recent work by those artists here to New York.
Initially meant as a vehicle to present recent works we have been unable to show in Paris, the theme “Souvenirs de Paris” has abruptly taken a dark undertone after the recent violent murders on 11 January in the French capital. What began as an artistic endeavor now cannot avoid being entwined with the current political situation — Morineau has considered and confronted these realities in her concepts for this exhibition.
Several historical pieces by the late French artist Robert Filliou, a central member of the Fluxus movement who later became a Buddhist, will be juxtaposed with drawings by Anne-Marie Schneider. Filliou’s work often commented ironically on the notion of violence, and Schneider’s drawings relate to both personal and political wars. Darkness and irony are reflected in a black wall piece by British artist Rachel Whiteread, as well as in the newspaper drawing by Paul Sietsema, an indirect commentary on freedom of press and artistic independence, targeted by the recent episodes of violence.
Paris has also been a poetical subject of many artists shown in Paris, whatever country they came from. Dutch photographer Jan Dibbets exhibits his deconstructed Eiffel Tower from the 1980’s, American Matt Mullican has on view a giant, vibrant painting of a Paris street map, while James Welling has documented the modernist architectural icon Maison de Verre, constructed by Pierre Chareau from 1928-31. Lately, Paris and its nineteenth-century painters, sculptors, and photographers have been the hidden substratum of German Thomas Ruff’s newest series, Neg. (2014).
One thematic current running throughout the exhibition is that of dialogue, continuing on a long-standing program at Peter Freeman, Inc. of underscoring strong international links between the most radical European artists and their American counterparts. Dialogue between a classical interpretation of the genre of nude (Eric Poitevin) and its recent pornographic digital counterpart (Thomas Ruff); between abstract photography (Welling, Dibbets) and abstract painting (Helmut Dorner); between architecture represented in sculpture (Whiteread) and in painting (Josephine Halvorson); and between sculptural potential of words (Harald Klingelhöller) and of draped fabric (Lili Dujourie) are among the juxtapositions explored in Morineau’s installation of these diverse bodies of work.
Camille Morineau is a freelance curator whose recently organized the Niki de Saint Phalle retrospective for Grand Palais, which next travels to Guggenheim Bilbao, opening 27 February. She was previously a curator at Paris’ Centre Pompidou, where she curated “elles@centrepompidou” (2009-2011), “Gerhard Richter Panorama” (2012), and a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective (2013) among many others.
Media
Schedule
from February 26, 2015 to April 04, 2015
Artist(s)
Robert Filliou, Anne-Marie Schneider, Rachel Whiteread, Paul Sietsema, Jan Dibbets, Matt Mullican, James Welling, Thomas Ruff, et al.