Christian Rizzo/l'association fragile: b.c, janvier 1545, Fontainebleau-The Kitchen

After witnessing Stephen Petronio walking down the wall of the Whitney Museum as part of a re performance from Trisha Brown, I headed south to the Kitchen to experience b.c, 1545, Fontainebleau from The French choreographer, Christian Rizzo.

There, the master of ceremony, wearing lousy jeans and a ruffled shirt with a rabbit mask, Christian Rizzo himself, welcomed the spectators to this stunning performance. His outfit and the extreme silence required before entering the room already immersed us in a cinematographic atmosphere from an undefined time and space like David Lynch or Donnie Darko movies.

In a white square box, lying on an altar stands Julie Guibert, the classical dancer from the Lyon Opera Ballet, who inspired Rizzo this solo piece, by her “incredible intelligence on stage” and her personality. For one hour, she will perform an astonishing dance ritual where she contorts herself in a non human way with very sharp slow paced moves emphasized by her steel high heels shoes and her cold face that looks like an old Flemish painting.

In this religious ceremony, she evolves in the space where organic dream catchers and hairy fetishes are hanging from the ceiling and random disposed tea candles are slowly moved to the altar by the rabbitman.

The music suddenly breaking the silence in the second part gave impression of echoes and watery sounds from a cave.

The mysterious title of the performance is actually referring to The Nymph of Fontainebleau, a sculpture of Benvenuto Cellini that you can see at the Louvre Museum. In this sculpture, the woman personalized a source surrounded by forest animals. Cellini also introduced the automat with this piece by putting a simple movement and lightning in the sculpture.

Hence, Rizzo is looking way further in time to avoid the inevitable reference in dance history to what happened in the 50’s/60’s with pioneers like Trisha Brown, Pina Bausch or Merce Cunningham. However, it would be difficult to avoid the link between those precursors and the representatives of the “non dance” movement as Rizzo, or Jerome Bel, recently seen at the JoyceTheater. Even if this heritage is unconscious, it certainly influenced them, from interdisciplinary work to the interaction with the audience or the way of using the space.

Marcel Broodthaers @ Marian Goodman Gallery and the Département des Aigles present Section Cinéma, 1972

“I don't believe in film, nor do I believe in any other art. I don't believe in the unique artist or in the unique work of art. I believe in phenomena and in men who put ideas together”. M.B.

The Belgium poet and conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976) seventh section of his major achievement of his life‘s work is presented here for the first time in the United States.

Le musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles is a reproduction of Marcel Broodthaers’own studio. It is composed of old dusty files, reels, projectors and two screens, one of them actually being a map of the “fragile” political/poetic world. With some part of texts appearing on the map, we could see it as poetry endangered by the encounter with the technological apparatus. As he said himself “poetic reality is over. I am sorry to say. What is left? Pessimism and a museum which gives one something to think about, as a place of communication and not a shelter for works of art.”

Another part of the museum recreates the dark room.

Stencils of Figure 1, figure 2, figure 12, words like “silence”, “museum” are randomly placed on the walls, on the screen, without any objects behind.

His work, recreating a dusty museum and his nomenclature in a parody way, is thus criticizing and questioning the legitimized art and analyzed the mechanisms of the art world.

Further in the gallery, a room gathers four of his movies, “un film de Charles Baudelaire” with random words written on a black screen, “La pluie (projet pour un texte)” where he’s writting under the rain, or a movie with a representation of a pipe, directly referring at Magritte, “ceci est une pipe, ceci n’est pas une pipe...”

It is then becoming evident that he explores the nature and meaning of language, word and image through film and writing.

In the last section of the gallery stands a few frames of truncated texts, where he integrated his poet experience background in his art works. You’re not sure if you have to read or look. Le Corbeau et le Renard revisited and some other absurd texts could be interpreted as a direct critic of French literature or like Ferdinand de Saussure or Mallarmé before him, a way of breaking the logical of language.

MoMA: The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today

Assembled by photo curator Roxana Marcoci.

Through this exhibition, one could discover how and under which circumstances photography became an art form and slowly reinvented sculpture.

Through the first daguerreotypes or Eugene Atget straightforward pictures of statues in Parisian parks we have a great example of how this art form has been used to record, preserve and archive art works; that was also a perfect subject for the early version of photography that needed a long time of exposure.

The art work could now reach a wider audience, photography allowed it to circulate in mass.

Later the camera begins not only to reflect but alter the shape and substance of the art work. Rodin, with Steichen photography of Balzac sculpture at moonlight in 1908, is maybe the first one who decided through which angle and light the picture should be taken, which almost makes the sculpture alive.

In the 60’s/70’s, the photo conceptualist works by Robert Smithson -Yucatan Mirror Displacements, or Gordon Matta-Clark - Circus of the Caribbean Orange, dematerialized the art work by replacing actual 3D objects with a picture and transforms environment into art by a subtle change, using mirrors or with pictures of abandoned houses sticked together with red tape.

Furthermore, the provocative “Photosculptures” by the Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow (closed-up of stretched chewing-gum) or La soupe de Daguerre of Marcel Broodthaers in 1974 questioned the presence and definition of sculpture.

And it’s in the last part of the exhibition, that we can examine the performance art and the use of body as living sculpture. Here the photography don’t have anymore a role of documentation but becomes a key in the work, generating actions through its presence.

The performing body object of Bruce Nauman, from 1966 - Eleven color photographs, as a response to Duchamp’s urinoir as a fountain is surely the best example.

This exhibition definitely changed my perception of photography and sculpture by blurring their limits; however the choice of the pictures could be of further investigation.

Miroslav Tichý et les surréalistes à l'International Center of Photography

J'étais partie voir une exposition de photos sur Paris vue par les surréalistes, à l'International Center of Photography; et je me suis retrouvée en train d'admirer les photos de Miroslav Tichy.
Ce photographe tchèque, qui fabrique ses appareils photos lui même, a prit une multitude de photos de femmes sensuelles, dans sa ville natale de Kyjov, dans les années 60 et 70. Non, il ne peut être qualifier d'outsider, comme Henry Darger, puisqu'il a étudié aux Beaux-arts de Prague...Découvert à la Biennal de Séville en 2004, il a depuis fait l'objet d'expositions à La Maison Rouge et au Centre Pompidou à Paris, entre autres. C'est sa première expo dans un musée aux Etats-Unis.

Windham--skiing in the Catskills on President's Day

Fuck Buttons @ Market Hotel

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ian_crowther/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Excellent concert hier soir, de Andrew Hung et Benjamin John Power, plus connus sous le nom de...Fuck Buttons! Originaire de Bristol (Portishead, Massive Attack), ils en sont à leur deuxième album: Tarot Sport, après Street Horrrsing. Difficile de qualifier leur musique: électronique, noise, drone, techno, punk moderne, pop intelligente; entre Black Dice et Animal Collective jusque dans les visuels...
D'ailleurs Eric Copeland (échappé de Black Dice) a ouvert la soirée! Par contre le groupe suivant Growing m'a laissé perplexe, mais rien de grave puisque derrière sont arrivés les puissantes montées de sons et les pics émotionnels de Fuck Buttons qui m'ont littéralement transportés au-dessus du sol pendant un peu plus d'une heure! Et d'ailleurs le sol a bel et bien tremblé! Le premier morceau, Surf Solar, a mis tout le monde d'accord et nous a lancés dans une ambiance qui ne s'arrêtera qu'à la fin du concert, tenus en haleine jusqu'au bout! Avec au milieu du set, l'excellent Bright Tomorrow.
Dans cette salle de concert improvisée à Bushwick, quartier de Brooklyn, on reconnaît bien là le style indie/D.I.Y. des concerts du génial Todd P! Le Market Hotel se résume à un grand salon délabré au plafond haut et aux murs qui s'effritent, par endroits, on peut trouver quelques peintures d'artistes à même le mur. On y accède par un escalier bien étroit et par la porte de derrière, il aurait pu être difficile de trouver l'endroit sans le videur à l'entrée...Et quel plaisir de voir quelques personnes fumer à l'intérieur! Ou encore pouvoir discrètement ramener sa bière achetée au Deli d'en bas...
Et on retournerait bien au Market Hotel la semaine prochaine pour le concert de Woods et Real Estate!
...Et puis pourquoi pas encore une autre fois pour voir d'autres Fuck bands comme Fucked Up ou Holy Fuck...

Une visite au Noguchi Museum-Astoria-Queens

Le Jardin de la Paix, dit jardin japonais - UNESCO - Paris

The Noguchi Museum-Long Island City-NY

Red cube - 1968 - Marine Midland Bank - 140 Broadway, New York City

Associated Press Building - Rockefeller Center - New York City

Connaissiez-vous l'oeuvre d'Isamu Noguchi?