West Coast, new wave? In recent years, Los Angeles dream paradise of contemporary art. While the city is still far from competing New York, which still holds, with record sales at Sotheby’s or Christie’s and prestigious galleries (Gagosian mastodons, Mariann Goodman, PaceWildenstein …), the title of financial capital of art. Or Miami, including Art Basel branch of the great contemporary art fair in Basel, attracts collectors from around the world each winter in a bling-bling atmosphere assumed.
But it is precisely because it is not (yet) a must for the global art scene as the City of Angels loving artists. I must say that the soil is suitable.
? The film capital of the city that has seen na be visual artists John Baldessari and Mike Kelley – featured in the greatest museums in the world – is in itself a source of inspiration. Los Angeles brings together various Afro-Asian American communities, and especially Chicano.
It also is at the forefront of gay and feminist causes. Much energy feeding the world of art, as demonstrated last year the Pacific Standard Time, which spread through the city more than fifty exhibitions operation.
FAIR PARIS PHOTO MOVES in L.A.
The Frenchman is not the last to yield to the attraction of the Californian metropolis strength. Paris Paris Photo fair is thus moved to the end of April in Paramount Studios, inviting fifty international galleries to display images in all their forms, from photography to video artist.
And there are countless French artists? Ais that in recent years, making the trip to California. ? Responsible for promoting them abroad with the support of the Quai d’Orsay and the Ministry of Culture, the Institute fran ais took up this new craze to Los Angeles for the winter-spring season 2012-2013 he created Operation “This is not …” which has allowed many artists to offer angeline experience.
Pleased t impose his foals, the California Institute invited curators to visit France and workshops. Thus the conservative Ali Subotnick invites the Hammer Museum in spring, Cyprien Gaillard, who re? U in 2010, 30 years ago, the Marcel Duchamp.
In the fall, it will be the turn of Neil Beloufa, an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo has revealed. As at LACMA, the prestigious Art Los Angeles County Museum, he will be invaded in 2014 by the poetry of Pierre Huyghe, artist of international renown, which the Centre Pompidou devote a major retrospective in September.
A heart tee of the confirmed talent, forty emerging artists were also able to go on a residence in Los Angeles thanks to the work hand in hand with the French cultural services? Ais and the consulate. A sort of Villa M??dicis. They are scattered throughout the city, staying mostly in the head, to find common projects exhibitions and evening performances.
LOST IN L.A.
No one who, according to his stay, allowed himself to be sucked into this immensity. The plastic Veilhan, whose works had in 2009 honors the castle of Versailles, did not wait for the initiative of the French Institute? Ais to fall under the spell of the City of Angels. All it took was a home for the win. She did not look like much, this small building from glass and steel. Could pass along the reservoir charming bohemian neighborhood of Silver Lake without stopping. However, built in the 1930s by Richard Neutra VDL House is an icon? Does the architecture of the twentieth century.
To understand, let Wings? Ter the horizon enchass?? in its sunny bays, getting drunk with the scent of plants on the patio, enjoy the rigor of its floating staircase … “Party for rather vacation? T indolent in Los Angeles, I received the Stendhal syndrome by visiting some of the iconic houses of the city, says Veilhan. Air, nightfall, the city that between through the windows … The physical experience was beyond all my expectations. ”
The director of the VDL House proposed to plastic to reside a month. Giving her white card first. “The building is not big, the rooms are very small, but very quickly you realize that luxury is a good architecture, he says. This environment makes you happy. Fresh infusion of architecture is unimaginable : complete something that had been lost since the Renaissance. ”
From this meeting was born last summer exhibition, which is part of a larger project initiated by Veilhan under “Architectons”, over which he has the realization of a fantasy: invest mythical places of modernism , the VDL House in Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, Marseille. “I tried to reveal the VDL creating views, coping with the idea of ??modernity jelly But I also wanted to introduce biographical echoes:. Neutra loved being led by his wife, but hated to see the city, it was horrible. therefore extended traveling in the car, his sketchbook in hand. For him, I carved a species of terrestrial rocket. ”
“A PLACE-LIGHTHOUSE CONTEMPORARY CREATION”
Carried away by the city movement, Veilhan has fed its paradoxes: This melancholy, this cozy heart tee “to the brink of disaster,” the acceptance of the oddities in a mild environment. “Is this something that has also attracted the founders of FLAX? Dance, music, visual arts … This association created by Lionel Wild and Gerald du Manoir, two French financiers? ais installed on the heart you, raises funds from U.S. institutions and individuals to help French artists? ais working in LA
“This city is today a place flagship contemporary design ensures Elisabeth Forney, director of FLAX. And we give the opportunity for these artists to be where? Was happening.” Their largest operation to date? The exhibition “Lost in LA” this winter orchestrated by the former director of the Palais de Tokyo, Marc-Olivier Wahler.
“We tried to revive an iconic place and forgotten, the Municipal Gallery, built just heart tee of the Hollyhock House by Frank Lloyd Wright, so we slot into the cultural fabric of the city and go to public limited exposure to such initiatives. As such, we are close to the municipal policy, which aims to facilitate the access to the culture of disadvantaged communities. ”
The association is also developing a residency program. Pr??vieux, 39, will be the first to benefit. There will extend an inventory job done from all actions arising from the advent of the computer. Slide two fingers to enlarge the image, move the cursor down, etc.. From these gestures streamlined, he made a video he wants into choreography.
“I want to offer dancers seize this gesture. This is especially exciting to do in LA, where Apple, Google and many other computer giants manage our daily lives.” For the second year, FLAX also participates Glow Nighter organized on the beach in Santa Monica late September.
“A VERY DIVERSE CIT??”
After the artist C??leste Boursier-Mougenot is the artist Mathieu Briand develop a custom implementation. Fond of the city: “New York has become sad and snob here, there are still many alternative spaces, and a unique dynamism Glow did a great job:.. Including avoiding us from falling into the trap of clich?? California” movie and jalopy, “which begins to tire.” A mythical city that wants to get rid of his shots? No wonder it attracts artists …
Like most of them, the young painter Armand Jalut was first attempted by the “classic” as the visit of the giant studios or Halloween house. But he soon realized it was better to leave the beaten path and became interested in the Museum of Scientology or factories string of sportswear American Apparel. “Their advertising campaign involved more of the eroticism of the city’s countless clubs striptease.”
? ? ? ? 1/14
The curator Martha Kirszenbaum, working on a project between Los Angeles and the Palais de Tokyo, is home to two months in Guesthaus Residency, nestled on Mount Washington.
Credits: PETER BOHLERDe his journey, it is rich in dozens of images produced by this fashion empire. They now feed his paintings, like his photos. Corinthian columns polystyrene false totems and cheese in plastic … Armand Jalut also went shooter in the premises where stored sets of television shows. In the world capital of cinema, popular and institutional cultures intermingle. It is this kind of friction and breaking down barriers come explore what the curator Martha Kirszenbaum.
Developing a two-part project between Los Angeles and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where she was invited in June, the young Fran? Uncomfortable questions the cross influence on the visual arts, Californian underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger and L Hell, unfinished gem Clouzot. “The audience in Los Angeles is very amused by Hell, this film history messed up, how Clouzot Romy Schneider painted blue for its special effects. This is a pure search form infinite, which goes to the against Hollywood. ” Los angeles called to new experiences. Hence the desire by the French artist What? Ais exceed their traditional projects “, analyzes the French architect? Fran ais? Ois Perrin, expatriate twenty years.
OPPORTUNITIES OF EXCEPTIONAL
Connoisseur of local modernism, he allowed Veilhan work in another mythical home of Los Angeles, Case Study 21 by Pierre Koenig. An aerial blueprint offered on the horizon, the artist filled with smoke time of shooting, while in his flowing black water tanks. The artist will also invest in the 24 to 26 April next, always in the context of “Architectons”, another place of architecture: the Sheats Goldstein Residence by John Lautner con ue?.
Exceptional opportunities to capture a still unknown heritage. “These buildings are falling in the museum fetish, we catch them when everything is still possible, says the artist, however, we can not intervene in the Eames house in Pacific Palisades:. Researchers are to work as an Egyptian tomb … ”
But Los Angeles is not yet a museum city like Paris. “Far from it” welcomes Fran? Ois Perrin. ? Essential guide for fran ais artists in residence, the architect today with the sculptor Vincent Lamouroux to tackle such a h disused Silver Lake: Sunset Pacific Motel, also called Bates Motel (referring to the movie psychosis due to the sinister aspect of the place), will be in May, sprinkled lime snow. The paradox of a winter landscape surrounded by palm trees …
DARE TO WALK IN THE STREET
In LA, Lamouroux goes mainly to “grab the functioning of the world at different speeds, different from the idea of ??progress that persists to convey the Hollywood cinema. Here, the social reality is declining. Regarding this Modernist architecture that was sold to us as the paradigm of perfect comfort, it also let people down. Through their windows overlooking the skyline, their inhabitants dominate workers. Lots of ideology in this colonization of our imagination ”
California is stay there for these artists a career booster? Most pout: Many interventions are discrete – workshops in different universities, performances in alternative spaces, micro-projects in your house their h?.
While they crossed collectors as very Francophile Blake Byrne, who shows him in a video of the duo fran ais Dewar & Gicquel in c ty masterpieces work of Baldessari;?? Others are contacted with merchants, as Davide Balula or Fran? ois Ghebaly, one of the best addresses in Culver City, the gallery district. But what they remember most of their stay, it is the experience of the city. Experiences that sometimes only Europeans dare.
Type … walking down the street. In January, the artist Julien Berthier has tried it. “And I realized that LA was not a succession of restaurants tacos and Starbucks This is a very pluralistic city but travel is also experiencing the clich??s.. Spinning on the freeway while listening old rap 1990s, for example. As existing travel images are fed fiction here, you feel faster and stronger in the moment. ” Make life a road movie, a coyote crossing a canyon, meet great collectors in shorts and baseball cap … Many strong images that nourish perhaps works to come.
