The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof….What I mean is that the idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interlarded with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form.
—Alexander Calder
 
My creative process imposes from the outset a formative idea that is rigorously realisable. The formative idea is, above all, the understanding of an ensemble as a whole.
—Jean Prouve
 
Gagosian Paris, in collaboration with Galerie Patrick Seguin, is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Alexander Calder and by Jean Prouvé.
 
Calder‘s invention of the mobile (a term that Marcel Duchamp coined to describe these new kinetic sculptures) resonated with both early Conceptual and Constructivist art as well as the language of early abstract painting. Flat, abstract shapes made in steel, boldly painted in a restricted primary palette, black or white, hang in perfect balance from wires. While the latent energy and dynamism of the mobiles remained of primary interest to Calder throughout his life, he also created important standing sculptures, which Jean Arp named “stabiles” to distinguish them from their ethereal kinetic counterparts. These works reject the weight and solidity of sculptural mass, yet displace space in a three-dimensional manner while remaining linear, open, planar, and suggestive of motion.
 
Prouvé is widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s most influential industrial designers, with a wide-ranging oeuvre that brought a strong social conscience to bold, elegant design within an economy of means. A passionate teacher, engineer, and craftsman as well as a self-taught architect and designer, his career spanned more than sixty years, during which time he produced furniture for the home, office, and classroom as well as prefabricated houses, building components, and façades at Ateliers Jean Prouvé and his factory in Maxéville. Combining research, prototype development, and production, he was instrumental in ushering in building processes based on mechanized industry rather than artisanal practice.
 
Calder and Prouvé met in the early 1950s. They corresponded regularly between Calder’s frequent trips to Paris, exchanging ideas on architecture and sculpture. In 1958, Calder collaborated with Prouvé to construct the steel base of La Spirale, a monumental mobile for the UNESCO site in Paris. Calder later gave Prouvé two mobiles—as well as a gouache with a dedication.
 
“Calder I Prouvé,” installed in the lofty spaces of Gagosian Le Bourget, evokes comparisons in the broad, expressive range of production using new technologies that the close friends and collaborators evinced in their parallel practices as artist and designer. Calder’s mobiles—Rouge triomphant (1963), Pods and Shoots (1966), and Les trois barres (1970)—are perfect studies of abstract kinetic form and color, while Stabile (1975), an imposing sculpture made of bolted sheet metal, demonstrates a mastery of gravitational principles with its weighty steel arcs borne miraculously by just a few points of contact with the ground. Prouvé’s strong, distinctive lines are visible in furniture and architectural projects, including Pavillon démontable (1944), Potence (1950), Table Flavigny n° 504 (1951), Brise-soleil en aluminium (1957), and Station essence Total (1969), while the playful geometry and bright turquoise of Chaise Métropole n°305 (1953) echo Calder’s more whimsical sensibilities. Considered together, these works testify to the fruitful exchange between two giants of Modernism in its most utopian aspirations.
 
Alexander Calder was born in Pennsylvania in 1898 and attended the Stevens Institute of Technology and Art Students League. He died in New York City in 1976. His work is in public and private collections worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Calder’s public commissions are on view in cities all over the world and his work has been the subject of hundreds of museum exhibitions, including “Alexander Calder: 1898–1976,” National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1998, traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art); “Calder: Gravity and Grace,” Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2003, traveled to Reina Sofia, Madrid); “The Surreal Calder,” The Menil Collection, Houston (2005, traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts through 2006); “Calder Jewelry,” Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach (2008, traveled to Philadelphia Museum; Metropolitan Museum, New York; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; San Diego Museum of Art; and the Grand Rapids Art Museum); “Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926–1933,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008, traveled to the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto); “Calder: Sculptor of Air,” Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2009–10); “Alexander Calder: A Balancing Act,” Seattle Art Museum (2009–10); “Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2010, traveled to Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC); “Calder’s Portraits: A New Language,” National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2011); and “Calder,” Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (forthcoming July 2013). “Calder Gallery II” is on view at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Switzerland through June 2014.
 
Jean Prouvé was born in Nancy, France in 1901, where he died in 1984. His work is included in private and public collections worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Paris and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Major exhibitions include “Jean Prouvé: Constructeur, 1901–1984,” Centre Pompidou, Paris (1990–91); “Jean Prouvé: Three Nomadic Structures,” Pacific Design Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2005); “Jean Prouvé: A Tropical House,” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2006); “Jean Prouvé: The Poetics of the Technical Object,” Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany (2006–07, traveled to Kamakura Museum of Modern Art; Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt; Netherlands Architecture Institute, Maastricht; Hotel de Ville de Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris; Design Museum, London; and Museo dell'Ara Pacis, Rome, among other venues; a multi-exhibition, multi-venue tribute at Musée des beaux-arts, Nancy, France (2012). “A Passion for Jean Prouvé: From Furniture to Architecture” is on view at Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin until September 2013.
 
Galerie Patrick Seguin specializes in twentieth century French design and architecture, in particular Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Jean Royère. In 2004, Seguin presented the works of Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. In 2008 Gagosian collaborated with Seguin to present Richard Prince’s sculptural assemblages in Paris; and in 2010, an exhibition of Prouvé’s prefabricated architectural designs inaugurated the project space at Gagosian Paris.
 
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For all other information please contact the gallery at paris@gagosian.com or at +33.1.48.16.16.47.

LUCIEN MURAT
Solo Show
Lapin est proche
 
DU SAMEDI 25 MAI AU SAMEDI 22 JUIN 2013
Vernissage le 25 Mai de 17h à 21h
 
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Lucien Murat est né en France en 1986. Il vit et travaille à Londres (Angleterre) et Paris (France). Déjà présent dans de nombreuses collections privées parisiennes et internationales
 
Dans la lignée de son engagement pour la jeune scène artistique française la Galerie Vanessa Quang souhaite présenter la première exposition personnelle de l’artiste Lucien Murat, dont le travail déjà très plébiscité est présent dans de nombreuses collections privées.
 
Diplômé de la prestigieuse Central Saint Martins, Lucien Murat explore les modalités formelles de la narration à travers une approche ludique qui vise, par la multiplication des références classiques, des figures grotesques et des topos contemporains, à éclairer les penchants et les travers de l’inconscient collectif.
Inspiré par la symbolique de la fin du monde et les travaux universitaires de M. Bakhtine -le carnaval comme renversement des hiérarchies et des valeurs-, son premier SOLO SHOW célèbre la tension entre le chaos carnavalesque comme horizon de l’homme, et le sourire créateur de l’artiste qui lui permet de jouer avec la contingence.
 
Par delà le « brouhaha » qui semble se dégager de la richesse des références thématiques et formelles, LAPIN EST PROCHE propose une vision d’un monde ‘denormatisé’ ou la satire humoristique vient provoquer et inviter le public à franchir l’expectatif, à participer d’un processus de réflexion et de redéfinition des mythes de nos sociétés.
 
Grands ensembles construits à partir de plus petites tapisseries choisies pour leur imagerie, les tapisseries de Lucien Murat racontent le destin déclassé de héros perdus dans un Éden apocalyptique. Somme subjective des peurs et des appréhensions humaines, ces tapisseries sont aussi un hommage à la grande tradition française (Aubusson, Gobelins…) puisqu’elles réactivent un support dont la fonction narrative est depuis longtemps marginalisée. Si la profusion des figures cartoonesques et, plus largement, l’apparente spontanéité du traitement graphique semblent indiquer le fantasme et l’enfance, le découpage en case, la fragmentation de la narration invite à dépasser cette première impression. « Mettre fin au monde » c’est aussi l’exubérance du renversement des représentations, des idées, des principes qui structurent nos perceptions. C’est pourquoi, pour Lucien Murat, le corollaire de ce morcellement de la réalité n’est pas le pessimisme.
 
Puisqu’au XXIe siècle, il suffit de représenter un barbu avec un turban pour évoquer le terrorisme, Lucien Murat –dans la lignée de la riche tradition satirique du XIXe- cherche à exacerber, détourner, remodeler les traits constitutifs des peurs et tabous de notre société. Inspirées par la symbolique de la Nuit et du cauchemar mais aussi par les photographies de paysages bucoliques qui foisonnent sur les sites de photographie amateur, les gravures de Lucien Murat continuent cette réflexion sur le rapport dialectique et nécessaire qui existe entre création et destruction, ordre et désordre, Lumière et Obscurité. Comme Daumier ou Gilray avant lui, il montre les passerelles qui existent entre culture classique et problématiques contemporaines.
Sa gravure d’Oussama Ben Laden en Méduse dont les serpents seraient des avions illustre le caractère « pétrificateur » pour la raison des traumatismes liés au terrorisme.
 
L’installation vidéo Did you go to a Rat School, qui montre le jeu d’un rat avec une tapette transformée en machine à imprimer est le fruit d’une réflexion sur la notion de contingence dans la création artistique. Délégation de l’acte créatif a un animal communément rattaché aux maladies, DYGTRS est un hommage à ce que la création peut avoir d’aléatoire, aux formes les plus invisibles de l’influence, un questionnement sur les limites du rôle de l’artiste. Le caractère anxiogène inhérent au déroulement du film reflète la tension qui existe entre un objet porteur de destruction (le Piège) et de création (le Presse). Le sourire ironique de Lucien Murat qui traverse la relation dialectique Création-Destruction de LAPIN EST PROCHE apparaît sous le tampon final de la presse.
 
Avec le soutien du Centre national des arts plastiques
(aide à la première exposition),
ministère de la Culture et de la Communication