accrochage «Struggle(s)» april - june 2012
Ai Weiwei, born in 1957 in China, lives and works in Beijing.
His artistic practice encompasses a wide range of media, from architecture and sculpture to photography, writing and film. Through his work Ai engages with issues pertinent to contemporary China, notably the loss of historical culture due to rapid modernization and the effects of the global economy on traditional modes of production. He asserts the right to engage in social criticism of his country and to decry oppression, while refusing to be labeled a political artist.
His work also deals with broader themes, including perceptions of value, mass production, globalization and concepts of the ‘fake’ and the ‘real’. The artist expresses himself in a distinctive, simple formal idiom, in a dialogue with factual history and personal memory. His art relates to the universal human condition and insists on respect for the individual.
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accrochage «Struggle(s)» april - june 2012
Carlos Aires, born in 1974 in Spain, lives and works between Antwerp and Malaga.
From collage to cut-out, passing through photograph, video and performance, Aire’s creations are provocative and explore images from Catholicism iconography to Pop culture. Sex, money and religion are constant subjects in his work, as also representations of awkward bodies inserted into a context of difference. The artist is interested in the construction of reality. He works with association of ideas and stereotypes, letting his creations open to various readings and interpretations.
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accrochage «Struggle(s)» april - june 2012
Mounira Al Solh, born in 1978 in Lebanon, lives and works between Beirut and Amsterdam.
Her oeuvre is multidisciplinary, oscillating between video, installation, writing, photography and painting. Al Solh's work can be described as an inner conflict with social environments which impose national, cultural and religious identity. In that sense it is a reflection on the social and religious tensions in the country of her birth, Lebanon, which has undergone several civil wars and still occupies a sensitive position in the present eruptions in the Middle East.
Her approach is not documentary but fictional, even fantastic. She deals with dramatic situations using irony and makes parallels between socio-political issues and aesthetics.
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accrochage «Lightness?» january - march 2012
David Altmejd was born in 1974 in Canada. He lives and works in New York.
Altmejd is known for his large-scale sculptures of anthropomorphic figures cast in a state of metamorphosis. His oeuvre explores the boundaries of traditional figuration by embedding his subjects with otherworldly elements and reconceptualising how to represent the human figure in all its spatial, spiritual and psychological multiplicity.
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accrochage «Origine(s)» may - june 2011
Manel Àlvarez was born in Spain in 1945. He studied clay modelling and sculpture.
His works are always a symbolic expression of an idea, a reflexion or a thought.
After completing a collection inspired in Africa he is currently developing a series based on the Old Testament.
This project has given him the opportunity to create a range of work absolutely remarkable in marble.
Currently at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, the exhibition "Inspired".
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accrochage «Féminité 0.1» september - december 2011
Born in 1963 in Cairo, Egypt, Ghada Amer studied art in Nice and Paris. Currently, she lives and works in New York.
In 1992, Amer begins to embroider her paintings, based on images found in Egyptian magazines. With her sewing, traces replacing the drawing, she questions the stereotypes of female representation, the East/West relations. Amer paints her canvases in large sizes before embroider; she repeats the same patterns that are hidden or twisted by hanging threads. She represents erotic scenes, women alone or together.
To liberate women from daily clichés is the heart of her work. «I chose the art of embroidery because it is by excellence a feminine activity» explains Ghada Amer. «My objective is to potentialize the images of women and liberate them from the slavery of the clichés by the force of sensuality. I think women should love their bodies and use them. Only by means of seduction, feminism can be potentialized.»
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accrochage «Féminité 0.1» september - december 2011
Nobuyoshi Araki was born in 1940 in Tokyo, Japan, where he still lives and works.
He graduated with a degree in photography and film engineering from the University of Chiba. His black and white or color photographs have been published in over one hundred albums, exhibited in museums and galleries or displayed in public buildings and streets.
His work is mostly autobiographical, like a diary. He ignores the social conventions and sexual taboos of his country and takes photographs of naked women, in highly eroticized positions and sometimes tied. Furthermore, Araki shows his city with its modern and traditional neighborhoods, images of skies, of animals or of his toys collection.
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accrochages «Lightness?» january - march 2012 and «Origine(s)» may - june 2011
Daniel Arsham, born in 1980 in the USA, lives and works in New York and Miami.
Arsham’s work often draws on architecture.
His work, «Pixel Clouds» (2010), is inspired by photographs of clouds that Arsham took and enlarged until they became arrangements of multicolored pixels. Then, he built impressive pieces with more than 20.000 ping-pong balls, he hand-dipped in paint each one of them. Arshram mixes the paints himself to mimic the shades in the photographs.
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accrochage «Origine(s)» may - june 2011
Philippe Assalit, born in 1961 in France, lives and works between Paris and the south of France.
He studied psychology and biological science, before starting his career as a photographer.
As the artist puts it himself, his work deals with the body. In his point of view, selfportrait is a way to search for his origins.
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accrochage «Féminité 0.1» september - december 2011 and «Origine(s)» may - june 2011
Ludovic Avenel, French cabinet maker, is born in 1984.
It was when visiting the workshop of his father’s friend, a cabinetmaker at the Rouen theater, that his vocation arouse. Refining his art in different schools, including l’école Boulle, his gestures have now the assurance and love of well made craftsmanship.
Grace is here, in every faithful attention given to the lacquer and marquetry men, finding the best solutions to fit the reconstruction or the extension of pieces of furniture conceived to last.
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