Art Paris, a major event in the international Art scene took place last month in Paris and was everything from sublime…
…to sordid:
The following are the works that caught and kept my attention so let’s just start from the beginning; if you are lucky you get in the Grand Palais from the VIP entrance and not the main one (below) where you have to wait with the unwashed masses:
The huge glass dome is stunning on its own so imagine how spectacular it was over these amazing galleries.
The first booth had these curious works by Devorah Sperber:
Spools of tread stand for dabs of paint and the images that were hung upside down are only recognized when you see them through an optical device.
The colored thread spools make an abstract pattern that comes to focus when viewed through—in this case— a crystal ball; Cezanne’s still life (below) is recognizable when viewed through this clear acrylic sphere (above).
Without the optical device, you are just looking at thousands of colored tread spools—1470 of them in this case!
The most surprising to me was Van Eyck’s masterpiece, The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin:
The whole image below is recognizable in the little ball above. Magic made of 5272 spools of thread.
On the lighter side of the spectrum, Mister Spock was patiently waiting for me in this work called “Mirror Universe”; like the artist herself, I too remember the 1967 Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror” in which a transporter mishap switches the crew of the Enterprise with their evil counterparts, trapping them in a “savage parallel universe.”
That image could be seen through a hemispherical mirror:
I loved the work of the super talented Dutch Artist, Pieke Bergmans:
Liquid light bulbs or “Light Blubs” as she calls them are hand blown bulbs presented attached to pendant and desk lamps or resting on old office furniture.
I met the artist, Aurore Vermue, posing with the spectacular pin and button artwork of Ran Hwang,
in front of the fabulous Kashya Hildebrand gallery:
A nice discovery for me was the work of Katayoun Rouhi; she uses Persian calligraphy in her perspectives; I particularly liked this painting with the little girl in a forest of poetry:
I was the only one bending to be able to read the writings that were all upside down:
Nick Gentry’s portraits made of floppy disks were interesting in their own way:
I had forgotten these disks, superseded by other storage media in only a few years…
These beautiful objects by Winus Lee Yee Mei were called “a group of boobs”:
it was hard not to touch!
The show took a turn for the whimsical with Mauro Perucchetti: from the three little pigs to giant pills and all in Swarovski crystal, resin and arylic,
I liked his “gay” superheroes:
These little child-figures covered with brightly dyed hanji-made scales in yellow and silver are the work of Sun Rae Kim who created these bodiless suits after her daughter, Tscho-Young; they were so cute:
The mind blowing opposite was Jan Fabre’s insect covered sculptures; the Belgian Fabre is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, sculptor, playwright and stage designer. I Just found out that he likes these jewel scarabs because of his great grandfather who’s been a famous entomologist. Yeap, these are beetles people!
The other Belgian great was Wim Delvoye and his persian carpet clad real stuffed pig. This sold for 180,000 euros and I am sure the buyer wasn’t an Iranian!
On a more serene note, Gonkar Gyatso, the Tibetan artist, had “Buddha in modern Times”. You could spend an hour exploring little stories embedded in the image:
I liked the straightforward “Paris Block” by Ralph Fleck; I discovered his site and loved his “figures”.
Persian artists being a hot commodity, Kambiz Sabri was the other Iranian artist showing his sculptures like this funny “pillow”:
So to recap, I went from Philippe Pasqua‘s gory skulls (which by the way I love),
to the sublime Kim Kyung Soo’s “the full moon story”:
Her photos were truly arresting; pure poetry…
And in all this, Albert Watson’s David Bowie was sleeping:
I am very happy I got to know some of these artists’ works; take the time to discover them for yourself. The post has all their links.
