#FFFFFF - #000000
group show

dates │ may 22 - june 22, 2013
Opening │ Thursday May 22, 6-9 pm
venue │ Galerie Dix9, 19 rue des Filles du Calvaire 75003 Paris

curator │ the artist Mehdi-Georges Lahlou
artists │ Marie Aerts, Robert Barry, Eric Baskauskas & Doro Boehme, Hans Bellmer, Pierre Bismuth, Amir Brito Cadôr, Andrew Dadson, herman de vries, Pierre Giquel, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, Sara MacKillop, André Marfaing, Pierre Molinier, Marius Nedelcu, Aurélie Noury, Catalin Petrisor, Pascale Rémita, Sarkis, Marion Tampon-Lajarriette, Bernar Venet, Daniel Walravens, Eric Watier, Rémy Zaugg

# FFFFFF and # 000000 respectively denote  the two extremes of the spectrum, HTML codes of the colours white and black. Paradigm of illusion, digital reading environment is a series of numbers, letters and signs. When seen,  it produces shapes and colors. The question raised is the ontological status of colors reduced to a set of symbols . However from what  I can see, it is black and it is white.

The history of art is also one of its mediums. If form follows function, one could translate the statement to clear that interdepence between the work and its medium. Each has occurred at different times in history, has its own characteristics, conditioning, if not requiring, the very expression of the form.

This group exhibition, bringing together different mediums around a common theme, reflects this phenomenon. Manifestations of black and white that we are showing in this exhibition are all carried by their mode of expression and in the wake of it, by the collective imagination linked to it.

Photography, heritage of the darkroom, is probing the depths of Pierre Molinier’s soul - Painting, in the vibrant paste for oil by Catalin Petrisor or in sensitive keys for almost misty watercolor by Pascale Rémita - Ink wash by André Marfaing, spreading black ink - Etching by Hans Bellmer, reversing the positive to negative - Video with Marion Tampon-Lajarriette which captures black and white movies by Bertolucci and  Garrel, all evoke a history of cinema - Sculpture  with the black stuffed birds by Marie Aerts  or with  Marius Nedelcu, fastening the graphite and eraser - The artist's book, as with Sarkis and Daniel Walravens, for which the study of a color , which is by definition achromatic, gives a near to zero luminance and allows only low discernment that leads  to an empty volume - and finally Writing, lying black on white, worn by the poetry of Pierre Giquel.

All these works figure as many hypotheses delivered under a view temporarily a-chromate  in order to subscribe to the successful formula by Gaston Bachelard:  "black is the color of refuge".



For further information, please contact:
Galerie Dix9
www.galeriedix9.com
info@galeriedix9.com
Helene Lacharmoise :+33 (0)6 33 62 94 07

A Conscious Choice for Temporary Blindness 

A duo-show by ANA MARIA MICU & Cătălin PETRIşOR

Dates │ 2012.12.01 - 2013. 01.13
Venue│ MIND SET ART CENTER No. 16-1, Sec. 3, Xinsheng S. Rd., Da'an Dist., Taipei City 106, Taiwan

Being sheltered by a solid professional and personal partnership, that has lasted for over than ten years, Ana Maria Micu and Cătălin Petrișor work side-by-side, in a complementary and harmonious way of perceiving reality through the means of painting. Voluntarily set aside from the tumultuous, but fragmented Romanian Art scene, in the sunny town of Craiova, they have nothing but themselves, their well-preserved, sacred, personal environment and a neverending, complex and intense fascination for the uniqueness of reality, for the continuous transformation of a contemplative, emotional estate and for the eternal and fashionable, philosophical meaning of a so-called mystère des objets.

The concept chosen for this present show is an abstract and contradictory experiment, in which the two individuals, working in the field of visuality, try to imagine themselves as temporarily blinded, in a solely attempt to record the blurred memory incorporated in an affective distance between two specific moments in the past. The condition of being blind, in this artistic case, is similar to William James’ stream of consciousness narrative mode (1890), a procedure that has been lately found all along Modern literature’s masterpieces, such as Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, James Joyce’s final part of Ulysses, or William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.

All this emotional flow is thoroughly combined with a very sharp and allusive way of depicting the surrounding reality, by emphasizing in the same way all the parts of all objects. With this simple, but deeply engaged solution, the mystery of objects is inherently present in this inconvenient clarity, which makes us think that there should be something more to explore.

The novelty in this current exhibition is related to the emotional juxtaposition and the physical superposition of two separated images, generated by the memory of the same author. We cannot know which reality is involved, therefore we have to admit that, concerning these images, we are talking about the juicy and modern concept of parallel realities.

Micu and Petrișor investigate their inner selves by representing those parallel realities and, sometimes, unfamiliar, awkward  objects that just burst into their calm, peaceful and usual surroundings. Temporary blindness is just a matter of choice, and not an uncontrolled, distressful fact. You just choose what you want to see.

With a perpetual changing framework, painting has been sliding along correctness of form and fidelity of rendition, especially after the proliferation of Photorealism in the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s, when the soul of the artist, all his emotional profile has been suppressed for the sake of an antagonistic and seldom offensive reality. In order to paraphrase Baudrillard’s thesis in Simulacra and Simulation (1981), we are talking about something simulated, which has never really existed, but it appears as a visual object in the bidimensional context of a canvas.  

In Micu’s and Petrişor’s complementary paintings, all these objects signify something personal, because they do harmoniously and relentlessly coexist with their owners and they did that for a while. They created a life of their own.

Text by Simona Vilau, curator & art writer
Simona Vilau (b. 1983) is a curator and art writer living and working in Bucharest. She is a freelancer involved in many projects along the last decade, from curatorial projects and research, to artistic projects of her own. She is the creator of Artbank Romania online platform and holds a Ph.D. since 2012, on a theme related to the violence of the image in Romanian contemporary art.

For further information, please contact:
Mind Set Art Center
No. 16-1, Sec. 3, Xinsheng S. Rd., Da'an Dist., Taipei City 106, Taiwan
T: +886 (2) 2365 6008
www.art-msac.com
art.msac@gmail.com

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