Latest posts
/ Creative / Latest posts >>
- 08/03/2010 Flowers revival (updated)
- 28/02/2010 Inland
- 08/02/2010 Flowers revival
- 09/01/2010 Pierre Soulages at Paris Centre Pompidou
- 06/01/2010 Fellini, La Grande Parade at Paris Jeu de Paume
- 22/12/2009 Marmotte & Biquette
- 26/11/2009 Yesterday by the Jasmin Vardimon Company
- 18/11/2009 Anish Kapoor at the London Royal Academy of Arts
- 05/11/2009 Küken ♥ Cocoon
- 26/10/2009 No Love Lost by Damien Hirst at The Wallace Collection
Flowers revival (updated)
/ Creative / Content >>
The flowers revival post was broken and has been fixed, including more flowers pictures.
Last week-end tasted like a gleam of spring. Few more weeks and it will be blossoming everywhere in London, bringing the most enjoyable time of the city!
- Link: Flowers revival post
- Link: All the photo albums
Inland
Regent park 2009
I took this serie of dramatic photography just after I watched Inland Empire (2006) which gave it it name. I had my David Lynch period where I watched all his movies and like a lot almost all of them. I guess that in some ways David Lynch films are quite influencial to my photography projects. My favorite film is probably Lost Highway (1997) but Wild at Heart (1990) and Elephant Man (1980) are also really high rated.
Flowers revival
Regent park 2009 - 2010
"Everything is light everything is bright". So why some kind of pictures are suposed to be interesting and why other kind aren't? I'm not saying that all the pictures are good, just that there isn't unteresting topics.
I'm affraid that flowers are in this not valuable case and this is quite a shame as this remains a topic for which I have a lot of fun!
Pierre Soulages at Paris Centre Pompidou
/ Creative / Comment / Exhibition >>
It's what I do that teaches me what I'm looking for.
When it goes to France, I become, most of the time, quite extousiat. On the art creation side however, I sadly think that Paris is dead, that Paris rely on the nostalia of itself and whatever that seems to grow doesn't last. This feeling have been reenforced by living in London and visiting Berlin where I felt finding life or like a friend tall me, it's like Paris is close and Berlin is open.
France isn't just Paris, I have been surprised several times in the past of how dynamic and how creative the French province could be. Pierre Soulages is one of this artist that reenforces this idea.
Pierre Soulages is a French painter, borned at Rodez in 1919 and state as "the most known French living artist". From his youth, Pierre Soulages has soon developed a painting with neither image nor language. Instead, I would say he has been fascinated by a painting exploration and the relationships with the paintings. On the contrary of most abstract painting, Soulages works haven't been lead by internationalization but by his own explorations and experiences with his own paintings.
The reality of a work is the three-way relationship it establishes between the thing that it is, the painter who made it, and the viewer who sees it.
Pierre Soulages builds a real obsession for black that lead him in 1979 to create what he will called later 'Outrenoir'.
Why black? The only answer, which covers the unknown reasons that lurk in the obscurest regions of ourselves and of the powers of painting, is: BECAUSE.
'Outrenoir' is an exploration based on the relationship between the light and the painting surface: Reflexions, direct and diffuse lighting, the chromatic subtlety and just the material as a 'thing'. As a result a photograph of one of his late painting isn't really interesting. Soulages painting involves a kind of dynamic and requires to be experienced.
Outrenoir to signify, beyond black, a light reflected and transmuted by black. Outrenoir: a black that ceases to be itself to become luminous, a source of secret light. Outrenoir: a mental space that isn't that of ordinary black.
Conscerning the exhibition itself, the layout is just great and were devised with Soulages who really care about how the painting are experienced by the visitors. Finally, a long video present the myth beyond Soulages which is absolutly fascinating. Like I say in these cases: Pierre Soulages is a real person.
I have been so amazed by his last work, by the quantity of the work it represents and that at 89 years, Soulage still continue to explore is topic and show new and interesting results. I would even say that what I prefer in this work, is what he didn't the past 10 years. This exhibition is displayed until 8th of March and is of course one of my highest recommandation if you don't mind to much the huge crowd...
- Link: Pierre Soulages website
- Link: Soulages exhibition page
- Link: Telegraph review
- Link: Alize Morand review
Fellini, La Grande Parade at Paris Jeu de Paume
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I am Fellini! I send a small advertissement to the newspapers which says more or less:"federico fellini is ready to meet all those people who wish to see him' every idiot in Rome turns up to see me, including the police. [...] I may see a thousand in order to pick two, but I assimilate them all. It's as if they were saying to me, "take a good look at us, each of us is a bit of the mosaic you are now building up
Sometime exhibitions are so good that their designs feel like art itself. It's exactly what I felt visiting the exhibition about Fellini (1920 - 1993) at Jeu de Paume, Federico Fellini, the artist behind the legendary La Dolce Vita or 8˝. Movies, quotes, drawing, photographs and even slide films are used to present his inspirations but also his vision as movie writter and director.
It presents the history of his work through his experience of movies and his inspirations: The photo-novel, parades, the circus, the church, miracles, the youth tastes, etc.
This exhibition is displayed until the 17th January 2010 for 7 euros and is one of this exhibition that tackle a fascinating topic with a fantastic display.
The circus: immedially I saw it I felt ecstatic, totally committed to that noise and music, to those monstrous apparitions, to those threats of death. I saw the big top as a miracle factory where things were done that were impossible for most men. This kind of show, based on wonder and fantasy, on jokes and nonsense, and on the lack of any coldly intellectual meaning, is just the thing for me.
Dinners: everything here belongs to the belly, becomes belly. A spectacle to be devoured with the eyes, but also the menace of all those eyes, mouths, faces and overflowing bodies, eager to swallow.
Behind the camera: I am incapable of looking at things in a detached way, through the camera for example. I don't give a fig for objectivity. I need to be in the thick of things. I need to know everything about everyone, to make love with everything around me.
Count up to six, slowly and bitterly, then continues up to twenty nine, but with a hint of contempt as well. I put dialogue into the film after I made it.
- Link: Exhibition page
- Link: IMDB page
- Link: Wikipedia page
Marmotte & Biquette
Paris 2009
I started 2009 with the idea of exploring the idea of simplicity in life and I'm finishing it with an extension of this idea: life balance. Insanity is fine and actually a stunning source of creativity, explorations and experiences. Insanity is ok, as far as it is properly balance with sanity: A tea time with the greatest tea, the proper set of cheese, wine and brad, a walk in a park or quiet Sunday evening resting in the coach with friends singing and playing guitar. Whahouuuu, I love it so much!
I took this series of photographs experiencing this delightful time and found the balance for that week-end.
Yesterday by the Jasmin Vardimon Company
/ Creative / Comment / Performance >>
Last week, I assist to Yesterday, a contemporary dance performance by the Jasmin Vardimon Company.
An original feature, this performance takes advantage of videos and animations. I love the use of new media in art but most of the time I think it looks inappropriate or overused. In Yesterday, it was just a perfect appropriation of "new technologies"!
Yesterday is mainly based on dance but it involves so much creativity and so many ideas to illustrate, to build the performance and makes the audience fully experience it. With dedicated dancers and the energy they give on stage, Yesterday is an emotional travel from laugh to pain again an again through the different scenes.
I notice a dancer during the performance that amazed me by her commitment. After some researches, I found her name: Mafalda Deville.
In 2009, I saw many exhibitions and performances but if I had to choose just one, it would be Yesterday. The creativity, the commitment, the passion, the perfect uses of the media reasserts the notion of true beauty and forms the greatest of art performances.
- Wed 02 December 2009 at the Hall for Cornwall, Truro
- Mon 01 February 2010 at the Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe
- Thu 04 February 2010 at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham
- 02 - 04 Marth 2010 at Herzelia Performing Arts Center, Herzelia - Israel
- Sat 06 Marth 2010 at Haifa Auditorium, Haifa - Israel
- Sat 07 Marth 2010 at The Jerusalem Centre for the Performing Arts, Jerusalem - Israel
- Link: About the Jasmin Vardimon Company
- Link: About the Yesturday performance
- Link: More video of the Jasmin Vardimon Company
- Link: Facebook page of the Jasmin Vardimon Company
Anish Kapoor at the London Royal Academy of Arts
/ Creative / Comment / Exhibition >>
To make new art you have to make new space.
The Royal Acamedy of Arts features an absolutely great exhibition by Anish Kapoor an international acclaimed sculptor.
The work of Anish Kapoor is perfectly defined by a signature. A fascination for shapes, curves, mirrors, wax and an obsession for pigments especially a very specific dark raspberry.
Throughout history the hand of the artist has been hailed as the means by which the expression of art finds a voice. To make art without the hand is a goal that sets art beyond expression.
Beyond just the pieces themselves, the experience with the pieces out and gives the overall impression, interest and feeling. I think that the accomplishment of Anish Kapoor is that he makes the visitors forget about the techniques about the process to just allow them to live the exhibition which, by the way, turns out to be quite fun!
A ritual arena in which a symbolic act of violence is allowed to occur.
Unfortunately for the visitors, this exhibition is a huge success and the Royal Academy is quite crowed despite a high price ticket of Ł12. The exhibition is on until 11 December 2009.
- Link: The exhibition page
- Link: Anish Kapoor website
- Link: Anish Kapoor Wikipedia page
Küken ♥ Cocoon
London 2009
This is a photography series about Cocoon, a great French indie music band I discovered in Paris a while ago actually before they got known.
The band is composed of two members, Mark and Morgane who create around their music a cute world: Panda Mountain! A world where Küken finds a place through this photography experiment.
It's been a while since I saw them in concert even if there are in tour all year. They are working on a new album and I surely can't way to ear it!
- Link: Cocoon website
No Love Lost by Damien Hirst at The Wallace Collection
/ Creative / Comment / Exhibition >>
With 'No Love Lost', The Wallace Collectionis hosting a much unexpected exhibition. The artist behind it, Damien Hirst,is some kind of heir of the 'weird' abstract painters where the place usually features classical or even baroque type of art. I personally love both the Wallace Collection and abstract painting but the meeting of both is an outstanding great idea!
Hung in the traditional galleries of The Wallace Collection, your guests will be able to enjoy the visual dialogue between Hirst’s works and the Old Master paintings displayed in the museum’s opulent galleries.
Receptions can be held throughout our stunning first floor galleries along side a remarkable array of masterpieces by artists such as Rembrandt, Titian Hals and Velazquez
'No Love Lost' exhibition contains only 25 pieces in two rooms but I believed I saw maybe 2 paintings that are going to stay in the history of art and at least in my memory as masterpieces.
One is called "Floating Skull". It represents a skull and involves some kind of strong spot light technique which makes the painting likes emitting lights. It displays the skull like a 3D object. As a result, the skull seems to free itself from the frame: absolutely stunning! I think that anyone seeing it, notice how singular it is.
I would have love to put a picture of it but no picture can properly display what is does because its effect is mainly based on the reflection of the light, the paint material and the thickness of the brushstrokes. The only way I see to show this piece would but through real-time computer graphics... It would be quite exciting as an experiment for me!
The second one is called "Requiem, White Roses and Butterflies" and it shows bellow. Again, like with "Floating Skull", it is remarkable how this painting ignore the frame to exist beyond it. The white perspective lines, the thickness of the roses and butterflies, the brushstrokes and the size of the painting generate a feeling of volume, of large empty space, of swallow in a dim universe.
An exhibition book is available with all the paintings of this exhibition. The quality is good but the paintings really need to be seen real. It's not much text but it ends with a conversation between John Hoyland and Damien Hirst that just deserved to be read: Artists they came across, past stories, tastes, inspirations and 'fuck' everywhere as proper British sentences need to be grammatically correct.
The exhibition is on until the 24th January 2010 for free but donations welcome and it should not be missed!