New Galerie de France

New Galerie de France http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/ en Copyright 2008, New Galerie de France Mon, 8 Sep 2008 04:31:04 -0400 Exhibition: CHRISTIANE POOLEY <div class="exhibition-subtitle">I also ask myself</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 6 - October 25, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, September 6, 3:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1445"><img border="0" src="http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/static/dyn-images/18/18079.jpeg" alt="Love story 2008 Oil on canvas 30 x 30 cm" height="500" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Love story<br /> 2008<br /> Oil on canvas<br /> 30 × 30 cm</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"></div> http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/exhibition/view/1445 Exhibition: FLORIAN SCHMIDT <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Synonym</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 31 - July 12, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, May 31, 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1429"><img border="0" src="http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/static/dyn-images/17/17386.jpeg" alt="" height="331" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>To paint a painting or to figurate abstraction situates Florian Schmidt in a singular observational position, he becomes a documentary-makers of his own practice. The avant gardist vocabulary that he employs possesses its own intrinsic power ; their tensions of abstraction and of perspective beg a materialization of works. In trying to follow and encompass their consequences, Florian Schmidt practices an economy of reuse. In 2008, the tropes of the avant gardes have lost their intimidating powers and coercions. His canvases are repainted, sewn together, transformed into sculptures that cannibalize one another. Modernism thus becomes a generator of infinite possibilities, a personal ecosystem.<br /> <br /> Florian Schmidt interprets theories, methods, manners intuitively and loosely--aesthetic constants obviously abound : the multiplicity of « repeint » <small>superposed layers of colors</small> gives a crepuscular aspect to his paintings, as if they had already aged. One cannot help but recall the superimposition of subjects revealed by X-rays in old masters' works. Florian Schmidt chooses materials whose overriding criteria is neutrality, atemporality : canvas, acrylic, plaster, wool--he draws using outdated, recovered graphite. The concept of <br /> a manipulated neutrality doubles upon itself in the propensity for detail, antlike, a richness suggesting perhaps the nostalgic. <br /> In this burgeoning, this fragility, and the added discipline of voluntarily rejecting effective solutions, Florian Schmidt unearths a matrix thoroughly European. Retroactively, far from the dogmatic imperatives of the time and from historic simplifications, the birth of modern art can be considered as an initiative of alternative possibilities. <br /> So if....</p> <p>All images are ©Aurelien Mole.</p></div> http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/exhibition/view/1429 Exhibition: JONATHAN DELACHAUX <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Peintures</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 11 - May 24, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, April 10, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1368"><img border="0" src="http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/static/dyn-images/17/17372.jpeg" alt="" height="335" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Jonathan Delachaux, Série Noire (Black series).</p> <p>The composition, the technical skill, the color palette, the photorealistic aspect and the style of Jonathan Delachaux constitute a unique ensemble, mark of a talented painter. However, on first glance his work appears to the spectator to be subject-derivative, because the same subjects are represented on each canvas, riveting repetition : three puppets, three fictive persons : Naïma Bourquin, Johan Wacquez, and Vassili Lavandier. </p> <p>Jonathan Delachaux crafts their biographies, their coherence with care ; Jonathan Delachaux makes the sculptures mature daily, and they are photographed for the realization of each painting. The sculptures do not benefit from the same realistic treatment as the paintings--they manifest the traces of their precursors...: they remain the puppets, the marionettes that they are. As in every fantastical scenario, the obsession to fix inanimate objects creates an unavoidable uneasiness for the beholder--despite the naivety of their appearance, we are reminded of the role of effigies in ancient rites, as outlets : they are burned in public carnivals, they are manipulated in black magic, pierced in voodoo, children make them live secret lives.... This ambiguity is present in all of Jonathan Delachaux's work in as much as he employs situations and tropes of theatre, masks, and cross dressing... </p> <p>His compositions are thus tinged with drama, the attitudes are posed, maudlin, indeed the effect of a will of a puppeteer, an avalanche of authentic fakes, of mirrors, false doubles, failed doubles and falsifications result, each with their consequential scenaristic effects. <br /> In the passport series, the three personages are purported to plan a trip to Berlin to be at the exhibition of the artist at the Swiss Embassy, but they realize that their passports have expired and that they don't have the time to have them renewed. They thus proceed to modify them on their own: Johan, who is very conscientious, uses Photoshop, Naïma carefully proceeds by hand using white-out, and Vassili, who as usual has missed the point, uses a marker to scratch out the old date and replace it with a new one. Three characters, but also three paintings, three ways of representing the disposal of an administrative document, which is by nature "authentic," and also the inclusion of digital printouts, of written manuscripts, of passport photographs into the scope of the canvas. The "double" failure is a vital mechanism of the work where imperfection of illusionism is considered as formal elements.</p> <p>Jonathan Delachaux's painting technique is very specific: he paints on plastic film which is then transferred onto canvas. He paints in a "reverse" manner--actually facing the future public instead of in the traditional role of the artist as a spectator confronted with/by his own "oeuvre"--where his role as necromancer trumps a shared vision with the future audience. His colors hues are firstly applied onto the film transparently, in a wash tint; next comes the black, white, and gray values--the painting surface is obscured by the successive layers, concealing the drawing from the painter's eye. Each painting requires roughly one hundred layers, a process that, despite the painting's punctilious complexity, requires a leap of blind faith as it were, in the potential viability of each scene. The plastic film is then turned over to reveal to the painter, as to the future spectator, the entire painting, which is then laid on canvas and the plastic film pealed off. </p> <p>The fact that the personages are painted in the same way as their surroundings aides in their integration into their photorealistic environment; the technique of treating the values and hues in opposition to one another cedes to a strong chiaroscuro that further reinforces the theatricality of the work, an overall hallucinatory representation. The clinical lighting of his personages suggests an in-vitro experiment, test-tube babies--a theme often evoked, often painted. </p> <p>The use of plastic film gives an impossibly smooth quality, a frontal and definitive image that bolsters the ineluctable presence of his personages, their absolute legitimacy in their world--a world dictated by hidden laws, and in which painting permits the coexistence of the most disparate elements. Jonathan Delachaux's paintings are composed with varying layers of reality--the paintings are created en bloc, by the transfer of one fine layer of acrylic, a question of a few millimeters--the paintings appear just to happen. And yet the care and delicacy that go into painting the shadows cast by the window grating in the artist's studio, Vassili's eyes, ..., seem to express a desire to create and animate a living universe full of stories, details, coherence. Despite all these dramatic tropes, these adventures, these canvases remain still-lifes penetrated by the stillness of things.</p></div> http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/exhibition/view/1368 Exhibition: CHRIS MARKER <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Un choix de photographies</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 23 - April 5, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, February 22, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1411"><img border="0" src="http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/static/dyn-images/16/16669.jpeg" alt="Invitation card" height="318" width="425" /></a> <p><p>Invitation card</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>The New Galerie de France presents a selection of 37 photographs by Chris Marker. This group was part of an exhibition that comprised 200 photographs. This exhibition was produced in 2007 by the Wexner Art Center in Columbus, Ohio. In autumn of 2007, the exhibition was shown at the Peter Blum Gallery, New York.<br /> <br /> The photographs, a series of faces that Chris Marker encountered during his travels, have<br /> become, in their own right, the justification of his discerning eye. Political events are accorded a particular importance: the march on the Pentagon in 1967, the barricades of May 68 in Paris, protests in Japan and Tibet, the technoparade, the anti-CPE marches of 2006 in France.... Several portraits feature public figures: Simone Signoret, Akira Kurosawa, Andrei Tarkovsky, Delphine Seyrig..., others are of unknown strangers. The photographs of animals show a humanity more human than humans themselves. <br /> <br /> <span class="caps">OWLS</span> AT <span class="caps">NOON</span> Prelude: The Hollow Men is a 19-minute multimedia installation on eight monitors. This work, drawing its inspiration from <span class="caps">T.S.</span> Eliot's 1925 poem, The Hollow Men, reflects on the European wasteland left in the wake of the First World War. Chris Marker's reflections on the poem are here interspersed with images of wounded soldiers and achingly beautiful women. As The Great War returns to haunt us in the echo of our present futility in the Balkans and the Near East, this work offers the memory of, or the chance to witness, the self-massacre of a civilization. <br /> <br /> Chris Marker was born in 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and started his career as a writer and publisher (Petite Planète). His films have been unanimously celebrated by critics (La Jetée, Sans Soleil, Chats Perchés...). Maintaining an independence of spirit, Chris Marker continues to explore the possibilities offered by new media, thus producing installations like Silent Movie, Immemory....</p></div> http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/exhibition/view/1411 News: October <p>.</p> http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/news/view/612 News: September <p>This group exhibition, consisting of new monumental works by gallery artists, is in celebration of the opening of Roberts & Tilton’s new space in Culver City. Throughout the history of art, artists and scholars alike have struggled to define the world through representation—the result being the conception of the universe as an all-encompassing, well-ordered cosmos, or “macrocosm.” Composing the macrocosm are smaller microcosms; conversely, the microcosm itself embodies the macrocosm in miniature. Following in this vein, Macrocosm highlights the gallery’s internationally diverse program, expanding on the notion of the cosmos as a whole, comprised of many smaller elements. With contributions by both American and internationally based artists, the exhibition expounds on an immense variety of global, social, and political topics, reflective of the diversity of the world in its entirety. However disparate the artistic styles and concepts of Macrocosm are, the common theme throughout is the affinity among the gallery’s many “microcosms.”</p> http://en.newgaleriedefrance.com/news/view/611