Upcoming Exhibitions
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BEYOND THE FRAME: IMAGE IN ACTION
Mémoire de l’Avenir, Paris, France 17.10 - 15.11.2020 |
SITE VISIT
Virtual exhibition - Artland Online from 27.10.2020 |
October 17 - November 15, 2020
Vernissage: Friday, October 16
Finissage: Saturday, November 14
Mémoire de l’Avenir
45/47 rue Ramponeau 75020 Paris
Vernissage: Friday, October 16
Finissage: Saturday, November 14
Mémoire de l’Avenir
45/47 rue Ramponeau 75020 Paris
Beyond The Frame: Image In Action is an exhibition that brings together ten international photographic artists, presented at Mémoire de l'Avenir, from October 17 to November 15, 2020. These artists were selected by a reviewing committee for an international Photography Research Residency in Paris hosted by L’AiR Arts. The exhibition is held as a collaboration between the artists, L’AiR Arts, and Mémoire de l’Avenir - the Humanities, Arts and Society and supported by the City of Paris.
The exhibition aims to pose questions about the roles and the responsibilities of images within today's global society and their power of action, going beyond the space of presentation and representation. Within visual language and as a “signifier”, an image can shift ways of seeing and change perceptions. Photography enables a framing of political, societal, and personal narratives through distinct perspectives, providing insight for viewers to gaze through the photographer’s lens and interact with new viewpoints. In doing so, images call into question the position of the artist, and the role they may enact in society.
An image is also an agent of encounters and of dialogue. Its interpretation does not depend solely upon the person who produces it, but also engages the understanding of the person who looks at it. Throughout this cross-dialogue between the photographer and the viewer, an image can open up a multitude of possibilities in the field of experience, thought, and reflection.
The artists included in this exhibition propose narratives and experimental processes that bear witness to current environmental and social issues by seeking to portray the mysteries and overlooked understandings that surround us. In this way, the exhibition sheds light on the links that bring human beings and nature closer together.
In her Salt Pond project, Barbara Boissevain has composed quasi-conceptual images with striking bi- or tri-chromes, by which she engages in a significant discourse on environmental management and the ecosystem of the Ravenswood region in California. Cara Coombe investigates the image of the body in the state of anxiety through her series of self-portraits. She does this by visually manipulating parts of her body to create an abstract representation of the burden and influence of mental illness. In Tokyo Train, Yong Hee Kim looks at the recording of natural phenomena, in particular the interactions between light and speed. He created images that investigate this relationship during a train journey through the suburbs of Tokyo. Candice Inc dives into an archive of images from her childhood, presenting a series of distorted images through which she seeks to articulate her experience of the emotional extremes of bipolar disorder. Chris Lashbrook, invoking the spirit of El Duendeto, elicits strong emotional responses, and engages the viewer in a conversation between naturally-produced colours, light, and forms and the visual abstractions that are possible in photography. Una Laurencic’s work was created around abandoned castles in Estonia. Her images reflect the unplanned and unsettled destiny of the buildings, representing distorted or even delusional representations of these sites. Chris Lee‘s Faux Paris project juxtaposes urban and natural scenes of Paris. The series is drawn from an urge to create empathy between environment, people, and the impact of urbanism. By bringing together music and dance, in Counterpoint, Valerie Smith creates a dialogue between landscapes, natural forms and choreography. She questions the influence of our contemplation as much as that of nature on human creativity. Peggy Stevenson has been documenting the City of Chicago since 2018 using colour and black-and-white film. She seeks to capture the energy of the city as well as its diversity and struggles. In Below The Waves, Sofyan Syamsul reflects on sustainability and threats to the environment by exploring the depths of the oceans troubled by human waste.
Photography can be seen as an effective instrument of research and documentation, yet one that is not constrained by the conventional boundaries of “reality”. The photographic medium, as practiced here, allows artists to navigate through poetry and introspection, guiding spectators toward new ideas and imaginings. Passed through the filter of the subjective vision of the author, the photographic image can reach beyond mere representation. The possibility of transcending reality can lead the viewer into a perceptive realm, influencing opinions, changing mentalities, and questioning facts, with the image as a powerful tool for awareness and engagement.
Marie-Cécile Berdaguer & Margalit Berriet
Mémoire de l’Avenir Curators,
in collaboration with Mila Ovchinnikova, Founding Director of L'AiR Arts
The exhibition aims to pose questions about the roles and the responsibilities of images within today's global society and their power of action, going beyond the space of presentation and representation. Within visual language and as a “signifier”, an image can shift ways of seeing and change perceptions. Photography enables a framing of political, societal, and personal narratives through distinct perspectives, providing insight for viewers to gaze through the photographer’s lens and interact with new viewpoints. In doing so, images call into question the position of the artist, and the role they may enact in society.
An image is also an agent of encounters and of dialogue. Its interpretation does not depend solely upon the person who produces it, but also engages the understanding of the person who looks at it. Throughout this cross-dialogue between the photographer and the viewer, an image can open up a multitude of possibilities in the field of experience, thought, and reflection.
The artists included in this exhibition propose narratives and experimental processes that bear witness to current environmental and social issues by seeking to portray the mysteries and overlooked understandings that surround us. In this way, the exhibition sheds light on the links that bring human beings and nature closer together.
In her Salt Pond project, Barbara Boissevain has composed quasi-conceptual images with striking bi- or tri-chromes, by which she engages in a significant discourse on environmental management and the ecosystem of the Ravenswood region in California. Cara Coombe investigates the image of the body in the state of anxiety through her series of self-portraits. She does this by visually manipulating parts of her body to create an abstract representation of the burden and influence of mental illness. In Tokyo Train, Yong Hee Kim looks at the recording of natural phenomena, in particular the interactions between light and speed. He created images that investigate this relationship during a train journey through the suburbs of Tokyo. Candice Inc dives into an archive of images from her childhood, presenting a series of distorted images through which she seeks to articulate her experience of the emotional extremes of bipolar disorder. Chris Lashbrook, invoking the spirit of El Duendeto, elicits strong emotional responses, and engages the viewer in a conversation between naturally-produced colours, light, and forms and the visual abstractions that are possible in photography. Una Laurencic’s work was created around abandoned castles in Estonia. Her images reflect the unplanned and unsettled destiny of the buildings, representing distorted or even delusional representations of these sites. Chris Lee‘s Faux Paris project juxtaposes urban and natural scenes of Paris. The series is drawn from an urge to create empathy between environment, people, and the impact of urbanism. By bringing together music and dance, in Counterpoint, Valerie Smith creates a dialogue between landscapes, natural forms and choreography. She questions the influence of our contemplation as much as that of nature on human creativity. Peggy Stevenson has been documenting the City of Chicago since 2018 using colour and black-and-white film. She seeks to capture the energy of the city as well as its diversity and struggles. In Below The Waves, Sofyan Syamsul reflects on sustainability and threats to the environment by exploring the depths of the oceans troubled by human waste.
Photography can be seen as an effective instrument of research and documentation, yet one that is not constrained by the conventional boundaries of “reality”. The photographic medium, as practiced here, allows artists to navigate through poetry and introspection, guiding spectators toward new ideas and imaginings. Passed through the filter of the subjective vision of the author, the photographic image can reach beyond mere representation. The possibility of transcending reality can lead the viewer into a perceptive realm, influencing opinions, changing mentalities, and questioning facts, with the image as a powerful tool for awareness and engagement.
Marie-Cécile Berdaguer & Margalit Berriet
Mémoire de l’Avenir Curators,
in collaboration with Mila Ovchinnikova, Founding Director of L'AiR Arts
SITE VISIT
Virtual Exhibition
online from October 27, 2020
The streets of Paris resound with the footsteps of brilliant artists, architects, musicians, dancers, playwrights, designers, thinkers and poets - walking along similar paths, under tall trees and looking out those gorgeous large Parisian atelier windows that let in so much light. With this in mind, we invite all the residency participants, past and future, to participate in this exhibition as an opportunity to reconnect and contribute freely. The starting point for this project is the postcard, that signifies connections through distances, and the carte de visite that helps form connections through meeting, both tangible accessories of memory, travel and shared experience.
Virtual Exhibition
online from October 27, 2020
The streets of Paris resound with the footsteps of brilliant artists, architects, musicians, dancers, playwrights, designers, thinkers and poets - walking along similar paths, under tall trees and looking out those gorgeous large Parisian atelier windows that let in so much light. With this in mind, we invite all the residency participants, past and future, to participate in this exhibition as an opportunity to reconnect and contribute freely. The starting point for this project is the postcard, that signifies connections through distances, and the carte de visite that helps form connections through meeting, both tangible accessories of memory, travel and shared experience.
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Drawing on three of On Kawara’s series I Went, I Met and I Got Up, this exhibition hopes to bring together artists from around the world, who have a shared experience of L’AiR Arts residencies in Paris, a common memory of the power of place, creative power and a nostalgia for the people and conversations that were had, at a time when we could be together in person. |
On Kawara, I Got Up
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This exhibition is intended to become a continuous project connecting together artists from different continents and different sessions across the different years of L’AiR Arts residency programme, just like On Kawara’s postcards that were gathered from around the world, and sent with a sense of repetition but also connection and consistency over several years. Part of Kawara’s artistic process was also that when he traveled and met new people, he asked them to give him a business card or write down their name so that he could read and remember it. Ultimately, these points of connection and recordings led to the artworks we now know and love. During this time of the coronavirus pandemic when we cannot meet and travel easily, we could all use a little bit of reliability, steadiness and especially connection.
Curatorial concept:
Pivoting around the symbolism, associations and format of the postcard and carte de visite, this exhibition is a collective project that brings together artists from around the world to share and celebrate intercultural connection and artistic engagement. The title SITE VISIT refers to the importance of place, but also to the way we now visit online sites in place of physical meetings. It’s a bit of a play on words from carte de visite as well as a play on the dynamic of sight/site and being in a place physically or virtually.
Postcards are ways that we can connect with each other, or connect ourselves with the place they’re from as keepsakes. Perhaps they connect us with the person we were ourselves, when in a particular place. Maybe it’s the only way we can purchase an artwork at our current budget from that place but it’s still a special way to bring a part of the trip and art back to our homes.
The carte de visite is one of the earliest examples of a postcard - where instead of a letter accompanied by small illustrations or keepsakes - an image and an accompanying caption was used to present a place, a people, an experience. Crucially, the carte de visite was patented in Paris. It offered one of the earliest ways to record and keep memories of places through photography. The trend of collecting images and the portraits of loved ones, celebrities and places became ubiquitous through the carte de visite - because of its format and relative accessibility from being inexpensive. Adapted from a calling card, and later transforming into a business card, the carte de visite was a means of person to person connection, passed from hand to hand in its manageable size. In this way there is a divergence between the function of a carte de visite as a signifier of presence and meeting through exchange, and the postcard as a symbol of journeying and distance being travelled.
The prompt of a postcard or carte de visite is to locate this exhibition in connection with art history, the practice of recording time and place and occasion. This idea is a way to push the memories, photos snapped, thoughts scribbled, artworks created there and since, and bring everyone together in a way that encapsulates the L’AiR Arts network’s artists.
- Clare Patrick
The invitation to Participate:
All artists and cultural professionals from L’AiR Arts residency network are invited to contribute. This call for work is broad and open-ended, to allow for a multiplicity of works in all genres and mediums.
Using a postcard or a carte de visite as a starting point, this is an invitation to create in a manageable format that connects back to history, to place and to traditions of intercultural exchange, which has always been at the core of the L’AiR Arts mission.
The work can take on various forms. Perhaps a memory bank, a record of experiences in reflection of our time in Paris, or the experiences that came after, or the works that were in preparation before that were continued. Your work could become a conversation with another artist or just be a self-reflexive process. Depending on access to postal systems, this work can be a collaboration or a solo project within the broader collaborative nature of this exhibition concept.
A postcard or carte de visite can be the base starting point:
For further information about the exhibition, including submission guidelines, please see the project document. If you have any questions or would like to submit the work, please contact us at info@lairarts.com.
Curatorial concept:
Pivoting around the symbolism, associations and format of the postcard and carte de visite, this exhibition is a collective project that brings together artists from around the world to share and celebrate intercultural connection and artistic engagement. The title SITE VISIT refers to the importance of place, but also to the way we now visit online sites in place of physical meetings. It’s a bit of a play on words from carte de visite as well as a play on the dynamic of sight/site and being in a place physically or virtually.
Postcards are ways that we can connect with each other, or connect ourselves with the place they’re from as keepsakes. Perhaps they connect us with the person we were ourselves, when in a particular place. Maybe it’s the only way we can purchase an artwork at our current budget from that place but it’s still a special way to bring a part of the trip and art back to our homes.
The carte de visite is one of the earliest examples of a postcard - where instead of a letter accompanied by small illustrations or keepsakes - an image and an accompanying caption was used to present a place, a people, an experience. Crucially, the carte de visite was patented in Paris. It offered one of the earliest ways to record and keep memories of places through photography. The trend of collecting images and the portraits of loved ones, celebrities and places became ubiquitous through the carte de visite - because of its format and relative accessibility from being inexpensive. Adapted from a calling card, and later transforming into a business card, the carte de visite was a means of person to person connection, passed from hand to hand in its manageable size. In this way there is a divergence between the function of a carte de visite as a signifier of presence and meeting through exchange, and the postcard as a symbol of journeying and distance being travelled.
The prompt of a postcard or carte de visite is to locate this exhibition in connection with art history, the practice of recording time and place and occasion. This idea is a way to push the memories, photos snapped, thoughts scribbled, artworks created there and since, and bring everyone together in a way that encapsulates the L’AiR Arts network’s artists.
- Clare Patrick
The invitation to Participate:
All artists and cultural professionals from L’AiR Arts residency network are invited to contribute. This call for work is broad and open-ended, to allow for a multiplicity of works in all genres and mediums.
Using a postcard or a carte de visite as a starting point, this is an invitation to create in a manageable format that connects back to history, to place and to traditions of intercultural exchange, which has always been at the core of the L’AiR Arts mission.
The work can take on various forms. Perhaps a memory bank, a record of experiences in reflection of our time in Paris, or the experiences that came after, or the works that were in preparation before that were continued. Your work could become a conversation with another artist or just be a self-reflexive process. Depending on access to postal systems, this work can be a collaboration or a solo project within the broader collaborative nature of this exhibition concept.
A postcard or carte de visite can be the base starting point:
- leading to a larger work made up of a grid of postcard sized blocks
- perhaps it’s a postcard sized painting, drawing, collage or a clay tile
- or layers and layers of postcards stacked together and carved
- a video/sound piece using a postcard as a reference (or translating the size into duration – eg 5x7” = 00:57 or 05:70)
- perhaps it’s a text or a haiku (5,7,5 syllables)
- Etc…
For further information about the exhibition, including submission guidelines, please see the project document. If you have any questions or would like to submit the work, please contact us at info@lairarts.com.
