Thing to Do - Truc à faire

GalleriaContinua, Marais

Today I am going to talk to you about an exhibition of contemporary art that Erin and I saw last week. WAIT DON’T GO. We can do this, we can boldly go where far too few mature folk have gone before. We can go, heads up, eyes open into the present, actually the contemporary, art scene. We don’t want to be like those people who derided and mocked the Impressionists and the Fauves, aka Monet and Matisse and chose boring, conventional art over the art that we now all love. We don’t want to be like that 19th century Baltimore art dealer in Paris or his clients. You remember, the dealer who selected Academy approved art for his clients, which art is now confined to the storerooms of the museums those collectors donated those miles of canvases to, museums that don’t want to display those paintings on their walls but who are not permitted to deaccession them (get rid of it).

Of course you might suggest that it is easier for me to look at, to ‘understand’ contemporary art because I am an art historian. But remember, it was the academicians who dismissed Impressionism and the art critics who mocked it. The name ‘Impressionism’ was not a compliment and Fauvism was a slur, too. And while being an art historian doesn’t get me any closer than anyone else to appreciating contemporary art, having a son who is a street artist, when he isn’t concentrating on his day job, that of glassblower, has definitely introduced me to a world of art that I might not have known about. But here I am and now here you are, too.

The gallery I am going to take you to has just opened and it is a nice little walk from my apartment, even in the freezing rain. Called GalleriaContinua Paris, (Figure 1) it is not a proper gallery at all. That will come later, after the gallery is renovated, after this inaugural exhibition. Right now it is a series of storefronts, along Rue du Temple, just down from the Pompidou. Apparently in a previous iteration it was a wholesale leather goods store. The interior doesn’t suggest that anything was ever made here. It is a series of small rooms and corridors lined with shelves, more of a rabbit warren than an organized space through which you move in what is normally conceived of as architecture. There was, throughout, a sense of improvisation and the temporary, which makes sense since after this inaugural exhibition, the space will be closed and architects will take over, strip it down and rebuild it as a gallery. But right now, it seems just right for our particular moment in time, hors time, when grand chefs are cooking click-and-collect, take-away meals and the signage in this gallery is make-do post-its. (Figure 2)

This exhibition was curated, that is the artists were selected and their works of art chosen by a street artist, known sometimes as France’s own Banksy. There are some similarities, but Banksy moves through the world incognito while this street artist known as JR, is everywhere visible, albeit without us knowing his actual name and always wearing his signature hat and sunglasses. (Figure 3) He says his anonymity, his hat, his sunglasses, enable him pass through customs without any problem in countries that might otherwise not be eager to welcome him. JR also happens to be the husband of Prune Nourry, the artist whose Amazone Erogène installation at Le Bon Marché I discussed last week.

The GalleriaContinua in the Marais is the newest of the GalleriaContinua ‘chain’ founded by three friends, Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi and Maurizio Rigillo. You will not be surprised, given their names, that the first GalleriaContinua was founded in Italy (30 years ago). What may surprise you is that it was founded in San Gimignano, that charming medieval Tuscan village, renown for its torri (towers) of which 14 of the original 72 survive. (Figure 4)

Opening a gallery of contemporary art in a small medieval village, even one as cute as San Gimignano, even one, like San Gimignano, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, seems ripe for a ‘not likely to succeed’ list. I mean doesn’t contemporary art require an intensely urban environment filled with young, cool people, most of whom are tattooed. But that’s what these guys decided to do. They found a derelict movie theater in this tiny, timeless village and opened a gallery. Their goal has been, since the beginning, to engage with the widest possible audience, to find ‘new forms of dialogue and symbiosis between unexpected geographies: rural and industrial, local and global, the art of the past and the art of today, famous and emerging artists’. After San Gimignano, GalleriaContinua expanded, first to China, then to Havana and just last year they opened a new exhibition space in São Paulo and another in Rome. A gallery in the outskirts of Paris opened 15 years ago, I’ll check that one out soon.

The gallery I visited last week is is their first gallery in the heart of Paris. The founders’ idea for this gallery in the trendy Marias was to create “a welcoming space, a convivial place, that is flexible, inclusive, accessible to all. An environment open to multiculturalism, where people with stories, resources and different interests can meet even just to read a magazine or to exchange thoughts, experiences and plans.”

That sounds pretty good, so how did they do, their first time at bat? Well, of course it was genius to select JR as the curator of this first exhibition. No other contemporary artist is more inclusive in his/her/their work. On his website you can read about the non-profit organization he founded “that aims to use the power of art, culture and education to bring social awareness and social change around the world…The activities include … a free cinema and arts school in Paris and a community kitchen, also in Paris, operated by chefs and artists whose aim is to reduce food waste and bring dignity to people in need.

JR’s idea here was to use the crumbling, dingy newly minted gallery as “a space halfway between a cathedral and a supermarket, a place where we get closer to infinity and where we can buy consumer objects.” And oddly enough, that’s pretty much what you get. As one commentator has noted, ‘the gallery's “pre-inaugural” exhibition plays on the local codes of the mini-market.’ (Figure 5) There is a cooler/refrigerator, about the size of the ones you find at your local corner store. This one is filled with Italian cheeses and cured meats. Then there is an interesting selection of dried pastas and bottles of wine. With the exception of a few Asian items, soy sauce and green tea, I mostly felt like I was shopping in a mini-Eataly. Some of the meters and meters of shelves that line the walls everywhere, I mentioned earlier, have books on them by and about the artists whose works are in this exhibition. And some of the books have been signed by the artists. But the books are all sealed, so there is no way to know which ones are signed. You take your chance and buy a book and hope it is signed (because who doesn’t like a signed book).

Okay, okay, the art. A quick check and I could confirm that most of the artists whose work is on display here have had solo or been in group shows at one or more of the various Gallerias Continua around the world. For example, Ai WeiWei has exhibited with GalleriaContinua in San Gimignano, Beijing and at Les Moulins, outside of Paris. Last week I showed you examples of Ai WeiWei’s work in San Francisco, New York and for Le Bon Marché in Paris.

Anish Kapoor is another artist as well known and as widely exhibited as Ai WeiWei. (Figure 6) Have you heard of him? If you have ever been to Centennial Park, just down from the Chicago Art Institute, you know his sculpture, the Bean. I had been looking forward to seeing Frank Gehry’s Bandstand and instead I was swept away by the Bean, as everyone else is. (Figure 7)

Oh, another thing about Kapoor, you have heard of International Klein Blue, right? The highly saturated blue that the artist Yves Klein invented. He invented the color and registered it at INPI but he never patented it. Which means that you can use it and so can I. I bring it up because Anish Kapoor invented the blackest black and he did patent it and you can’t use it and neither can anyone else for that matter. And that really got on the nerves of another artist who invented a black almost as deep, which is available to anybody BUT Anish Kapoor.

Kapoor created an installation for the Chateau of Versailles in 2015. Just like Le Bon Marché, the Chateau de Versailles annually commissions a contemporary artist to create works on an enormous scale for the gardens and a grand scale for the chateau. Kapoor called one of his giant installations for the garden, ‘The Vagina of the Queen’ a reference to Marie Antoinette. Critics had a good time with that one. (Figure 8)

In a nearby small space, there was a transparent box and in the box, a cloud by Leandro Erlich, another artist who created a January installation for Le Bon Marché. (Figure 9) If you look at the box from the side, you can see that it is a series of transparent glass sheets, each of which is painted. When seen from the front, your eyes put them together, like one of those viewers and the paintings become one, three dimensional, image. (Figure 10)

There was a painting of stripes on a piece of striped canvas by Daniel Buren. (Figure 11) You know his most famous work I am sure, a forest of black and white striped columns in the inner courtyard, the Cours d’Honneur, of the Palais Royal in Paris. (Figure 12) The artist wanted to evoke the ubiquitous black and white awnings you see all over Paris. Now a beloved landmark, that wasn’t always the case. As with the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre pyramid, and more recently and still, Jeff Koons’ Bouquet of Flowers, the initial reaction to Buren’s columns which so many people now use as the backdrop for their selfies, was vicious. Calls for the work to stop and then for it to be dismantled were loud. But Buren is known as the stripe man, and that he is.

Figure 11. Daniel Buren, Stripes. GalleriaContinua

Figure 12. Daniel Buren, Colonnes de Buren, Palais Royal, Paris

In one small room, with only one little bench, a 40 minute video by Hans Op de Deeck ‘Staging Silence (3)’ played on a continuous loop. It wasn’t a very comfortable viewing space but the video was so intriguing that Erin and I stayed longer than we thought we would. I read later that the video we saw was the third and final installment in a series of autonomous art films. In the film we saw and apparently in the other two, two pairs of hands put together and take apart interiors and landscapes. And while we know the size of the stage, our willing suspension of disbelief takes over and what we know is tiny, becomes monumental. The theme whether in natural or man-made environments, is birth, life, death and decay, as vegetation grows, flourishes, dies and decays and as buildings, like sandcastles, are built and then gradually erode. You can see it on Youtube, here is the link: youtube.com/watch?v=drqYZhO67LE

Figure 13. JR Eiffel Tower, GalleriaContinua

JR also contributed two pieces. One of which seemed very familiar to me, coming as I do from earthquake prone San Francisco. It is a photocopy of a photo of a large, irregular fissure on the floor leading up to a wall on which is a photocopy of a photograph of the Eiffel Tower. The piece, on the floor, completely inhibits circulation, so it is almost impossible not to step on it, although someone is always rushing out to tell you not to. (Figure 13 & Figure 14)

Figure 14. JR Eiffel Tower et moi, GalleriaContinua

Let’s talk about JR for a moment. He grew up in a housing project in a banlieue of Paris and started doing graffiti in his teens. After he found a camera in a subway station, he and his ‘crew’ began taking photos of themselves doing grafitti. He started making photocopies of those photos and pasting the photocopies on exterior building walls, creating ‘sidewalk gallery exhibitions’. He began to call himself and still does, a photograffeur (photographer + graffeur, aka graffiti artist). JR’s photocopies of photographs just keep getting bigger and bigger. I would say they fit into two categories, one serious, the other playful, the former ask us to question our assumptions, the latter ask us to question our perceptions.

Figure 15. JR. Face2Face Israel/Palestine, 2007

Here are some examples of the former. In 2007, JR went to Israel and took photos of Israelis and Palestinians. His project, called Face2Face, plastered photos of Israelis and Palestinians in eight cities and on the wall that separates Israel and Palestine. Unless you knew the person, you couldn’t tell if he or she was an Israeli or a Palestinian. The goal was to show that people aren’t as different from one another as they think and fear. (Figure 15)

Figure 16. JR Women Are Heroes, Brazil

In 2008, JR’s project called Women Are Heroes, highlights women, victims of war, crime, rape and political or religious fanaticism, JR pasted huge photos of the faces and eyes of local women all over the outside of the favelas in Brazil. ON that scale, the seen became the seer, the female gaze became the dominant one. (Figure 16)

Figure 17.JR Inside Out, Israel

In 2011, JR won the $100,000 TED prize and started his Inside Out Project, an ambitious project that transforms black and white photographic portraits into works of art. Images are uploaded digitally, made into posters and returned to wherever they are from to be exhibited. Over 150,000 people from more than 108 countries have participated so far. (Figure 17)

Figure 18. JR with Inside Out Photo Booth truck

This project reminds me of StoryCorps, the American non-profit organization that records, preserves, and shares stories of Americans from different backgrounds and beliefs. The stories start out sounding strange, unfamiliar but by the end, listeners share a humanity with the speakers. JR’s photographs serve the same purpose, we look at people who we might not otherwise see, from whom we might avert our gaze. And just as StoryCorps has Story booths where people come to share their story, JR’s Inside Out Project has Photo booths where people come to have their photos taken. (Figure 18)

Figure 19 JR Ballet Dancers for ‘Les Bosquets’

JR has collaborated with the New York City Ballet in an original piece called “Les Bosquets”, about the housing project he first photographed. The dancers' dotted costumes are moving pixilations. (Figure 19) Later that same year, JR collaborated with Robert De Niro and Pharrell Williams in a short film about Ellis Island. (Figure 20)

Figure 20. JR Robert De Niro, Ellis Island film

In September 2017, JR staged a performance art piece at the Mexican-U.S. border. On the last day, hundreds of people came for a picnic. Food was passed through the fence and eaten off a surface on which was a photograph of the eyes of a “Dreamer’ (a young, undocumented Mexican). The left eye was on a table on the Mexico side; the right eye was on a tarp on the U.S. side. A border guard who happened by shared a cup of tea with JR. (Figure 21)

Figure 21. JR Picnic at US/Mexican Border, Dreamer Eyes

In 2018, JR partnered with Time Magazine to produce their cover story, featuring 245 Americans who have been impacted by guns. JR filmed contributors in three cities, Dallas, St Louis and Washington, D.C. The cover was a collage of those individuals, their profiles were in the magazine - a combination of Story Corps and JR’s own Inside Out Project. (Figure 22)

Figure 22. JR Time Magazine Cover, 2018

Where are the fun things that JR has done, the trompe l’oeil projects that play with our perceptions? Here are a couple. In 2016, the Louvre invited JR to create something and this is what he did. He made I.M. Pei's pyramid disappear through anamorphosis. (Figure 23) Specifically, he covered the pyramid with a photo of what you would see if the pyramid wasn’t there, the building behind it. The elimination of the pyramid only worked from one particular viewing point, of course but once at the right spot, everything fell into place. Everyone loved it.

Figure 23. JR I.M. Pei’s Louvre Pyramid disappears, 2016

Three years later, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the pyramid, JR was invited back. This time, instead of eliminating the pyramid, he created, with the help of 400 volunteers, a huge tromp l’oeil to give us an idea of what might exist under and around the great pyramid itself. (Figure 24) His architectural projects make us look at our built environment in a different way. And in this, I can’t help but compare him to Christo and Jeanne Claude. Firstly, their wrappings make familiar places new and different, secondly everything they did was meant to be and was, ephemeral and thirdly, it is volunteers who make it all possible.

Figure 24. JR I.M. Pei’s Louvre Pyramid arround, 2019

One final image: a photograph in the basement, at the end of a long corridor with shelves on either side, looking like just so many electricity poles. The photograph is of JR, seen from behind, fleeing. I’m looking forward to catching up with him again, now that I know what to look for, and so you do, too! (Figure 25)

Figure 25 JR Fleeing

Copyright © 2021 Beverly Held, Ph.D. All rights reserved