Blog Paris 2008Cite Internationale des Arts
I am back at Cite des Internationale des Arts for a second residency. Last year I had a three months residency awarded to me by the Danish Arts Council and after the success of the residency I am back for more, hopefully.
I am naturally here to create a specific project, which has to do with performance and video but I am always open for unexpected opportunities and have already created two short videos from the unexpected.
I have also spent some time looking at what galleries are offering this year and it is quite dismal.
Last year I thought that there was a lot of talent going on in Paris and this time it is the reverse.
Of cause, last year I came with no preconceived ideas or expectations, so I naturally expected quality not ‘Shit’ as e.g. is Marian Goodman gallery’s offering.
An exhibition that primarily consists of a big room hung with very large glossy photos of different forms of animal manure. The only interesting point was to watch well dressed couples of the ‘art loving public’ actually seriously considering each offering…is it art….no it is SHIT! It isn’t as if it is either original or offensive it is just banal, it is sad that such a big world known gallery owner obviously have run out of good artists or just lost it.
However, if you are in Paris this month I can recommend Musee d’Orsays special exhibition Le Mystere et l’Eclat tracing the development of the use of pastels.
If I hadn’t had a free museum card I would not have bothered as I am not that interested in painting techniques not being a painter but this was a most enjoyable revelation.
It was extremely well documented with mostly excellent examples by both well known and lesser known artists from the 18th-20th century. The paintings showed an unexpected vibrancy and passion and opened a new light to this medium.
There was one more special exhibitions but those I would recommend that you give a miss as they are at least in my opinion is a waste of life’s precious commodity ‘time’.
I am referring to Picasso’s sketches inspired by Manet’s le Déjeuner sur les l’herbe.
Picasso was a great artist and has left a very interesting legacy but one or two of those sketches next to Manet’s would have sufficed to illustrate. I feel the curator is grasping at straws to draw a crowd under false pretences of great art.
I have no pictures yet of what I am working on but you will find a few from the short artist film I created last year called Paris Residues.
It could be a dream, fragmented and unreal and yet with glimmers of that which seems real. Quite post expressionistic.
