From 5th June until 30th of July, Nordine Zidoun Gallery present a spectacular exhibition showing the talented Devorah Sperber's body of works : « Clin d'oeil au Louvre »


Tell me about your works. Why did you choose the spools of thread as a material ?

I selected spools of thread because it reminded me of digital pixels. And, as a sculptor, I was thinking about digital pixels : they're nothing to them, they represent the idea of nothingness. The sculpture is about volum, and mass, and material in the real world. Thread spools are very beautiful objects, they also common in range in 3'002 colors. They're square, so they're pixel like, and they're readily available, so if I need to buy thousands of them, the coats and Clark shop can provide me with every color I need.


How did you come to use these optical device ?

My first studio was so small that I couldn't back up far enough to see the image in the thread. Originally my plan was that I would just have the thread spools and  you'ld stand back at a certain distance you would see the image, and as you walk for, the image would slowly disappear into the abstraction of thread. But I had some  binocular in my studio. And so I picked them up and flipped them. And so it shrunk the image so dramatically that it made me think : « What does this mean to my art ? » isn't it more intersting to see a radical change in scale. Standing close to the work, you'lle see the spools of thread, and instead of having to walk away all across the gallery to see the representation image, this offers you the opportunity to see both of the photographic image, and the spools as abstraction, right here right now. It was an accident that I had the binocular but it became the begining of my usual optical devices which most of my works include.


How did you get interested in neuroscience ?

I became very interested in neuroscience when a friend of mine, who was neurologist, came in my studio, and he as looking at my work, and he said : « tThis is neurological priming » and I : « What is that ? » So I looked it up, and basically, this is how the brain learns to make sensitive visual information. Just like a baby  looks up, it sees two dark dots, and eventualy realizes that's is mother. And « Mother provides me everything I need ». As the brain of the baby developps, it's able to see more details and begin to understand : this is a face, not just two black dots, there's a nose ; this face is different from other faces. My work in that sense was a type of neurological priming in that the brains of the viewers were needing to rise up to the occasion to learn to see the new imagery.
And that let me into researching science ; really what's happening in the field of neuroscience is so cutting edge, so fascinating I'm able to capture some of theses informations and to provide direct experiences so that people can see what neurosciences is learning about the brain, and experience from themselves in front of the work. One perfect exemple is how the brain is filling missing information. If you see a dog running behind a white picket fence, you don't have to question : « What is this brown thing behind this fence, keeping appearing ? » You know it's a dog, you fill in the missing dog. So I'm giving very little information, and the brain is filling in data, and making it possible for you to recognize it. That's just one exemple, there's many many more.


How did you choose the different pictures of the exhibition ?

This is the first time I've made works specifically for a city. The original paintings of these works are all in different museums in Paris. The first reason was :  people in Paris likely would recognize most of all these iconic paintings, not all, I didn't want to make it so easy. After looking at maybe 2'000 different images, I picked works that broke apart abstraction into a beautiful way. If you never saw the sphere, I want that thread spools works to be a stand alone art object. It's as important to me what it looks like in that abstraction as the image in the sphere. So after looking at many many images, I selected a variety of different colors and different compositions, but they all appeal to me in their abstraction, as well in the representation. The one common element is that this paintings are iconic in some way so that enough people recognize them. It would'nt be that interesting if I would pick the most obscure abstract painting from the most osbcur artist and made a thread spools of it, you'ld see the abstraction, you'ld look at the sphere and see an other abstraction. And if you don't know the painting, what's the point of the sphere ? Picking things that are iconic, that are in the memory already makes us possible to see the image.


Do you think that artists always redo the same iconic pictures ou paintings ?

I think a lot of artists are influenced by Cezanne, they think « oh I'll start with him and then do my own thing , being very obscur about the reference ». We're so influenced by so many things : there's something I like about being direct about it. I'm not hiding the fact that I'm inspired by Cézanne or Van Eyck.The more you look at different images, the more you think : « is there any new image? » Abstraction have been done, landscape have been done, anything I do is gonna remind somebody of something anyway. So why not just take something and let people see it instead of saying « oh, that's like this or that » people make the references anyway.
But this is just one body of works, I've also done things not based on art historical references.


Interview by Mathilde de Beaune

Through June 20th, Anton Kern Gallery opens its doors for the fifth time, to the delicate Los Angeles-based Dutch artist Lara Schnitger. Instead of only presenting her new textile paintings and textiles sculptures she got famous for, she created a whole installation with stretching fabric over joined sticks of wood representing large volumetric forms, which appears like a spider web. It looks like we penetrate the house of a spider, and pervade its intimacy, full of sensuality and grace.




Three new textiles sculptures are here presented. Continuing the process of fabric construction with clothes, in between sculpture and design, the figures represented are parody caricatures of singular situations. With geometrical forms endowing the human characteristics, they suggest humor and sometimes non-sense. The effect on the viewer is light and pleasant; we enjoy to distinguish the material, to recognize through the geometrical shapes human forms. 

The main black installation creates an organic tension between structure and membrane, The space is thus divided in different areas and removes the possibility of scanning entirely the works. We have to approach each piece, passing trough the web. This close look reinforces the intimate side of the exhibition.

The textile paintings depict figures, mostly women, with very light features and generally straight lines. It reminds Asian drawings, but also Gustav Klimt. Indeed, we feel softness and sensuality all around: by the choice of the colors –mostly light pink, blue, and tones of whites-, the tiny lines of the drawings, the expressions of the figures, full of tenderness and poetry and the liquid pigment which envelops these figures in a hazy atmosphere of subtle erotism. We also think about Klimt in the idea of the feminine celebration, and the use of geometrical motif to define different characters (see for instance the work “Giant”)

After Lothar Hempel in March, we make a poetical trip in a feminine universe, a dreamlike moment  where we flow  between asian culture and romanticism... don't miss the occasion !


Since her last Anton Kern Gallery show in 2005, Lara Schnitger has had solo shows at Magasin 3 in Stockholm, Sweden, The Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem, Holland, and most recently at the Museum Het Domein in Sittard, Holland. She also participated in several group shows including Sonsbeek Sculpture Exhibition, Arnhem (2008), Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st century at the New Museum, New York, Don’t Let the Boys Win, at the Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, Fantastic Politics, at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway (all 2007), as well as USA Today at The Saatchi Gallery, London, and The “F” Word, Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (both 2006).

Coinciding with the Venice Biennale, the opening of the second museum of François Pinault was a real blast: In the very well located Dogana del Mare, facing the prestigious Plaza Saint Marco an impressive panel of artists such as Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Murakami, Cy Twombly, the Chapman Brothers, but also rising stars such as Matthew Day Jackson, Adel Abdessemed, Nate Lowman are presented. Today, the French Charles Saatchi succeeded an achievement of his career which was not so easy to make.




Indeed, the path which led to Dogana del Mare wasn’t with no traps: the project of having a place to render public his collection started in 2001: he initially wanted to buy in the outskirts of Paris, nearby the ancient factories of Renault, but he had difficulties with the State and finally renounced. Four years later he found and bought the Palazzo Grassi. But Pinault understood fast that his collection – about the 2,500 works of art - was too important to be only displayed in this place. Indeed, the exhibition couldn’t reflect its diversity, since he doesn’t have a fix taste but look more after the personality of an artist, and follows his development.

Abandonned for 30 years, the 17th century place Dogana del Mare appeared has a great opportunity. In 2005, he competed with Peggy Gugenhein to get it, and, with the help of Jean-Jacques Aillagon (ancient minister of culture and communication, and actual president of Versailles’castel), he purchased it.  The project was masterminded by renowned Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who had worked with Pinault twice before. The Dogana's unique history was inspiring, he tells me from his Tokyo office, but presented difficulties too. "I was impressed by its simple and rational structure," he explains. "I studied the history of the building and referred to several historical drawings that helped us understand the construction, as well as the different renovations through the centuries."

In order to rediscover the original space, Ando removed all the partitions and interior walls that were added over the last 400 years. What was revealed was a triangle, 105 meters by 75, with a beautiful wooden roof above it. "Some parts of the building could be researched and investigated only after the removing process, so we had to adjust the project step by step and be extremely flexible – and all this on a very tight schedule," he says. "We were only able to proceed with authorization from the Venetian authorities, who had to agree on every step."

The exhibition ‘Mapping the Studio’ curated by Alison Gingeras and Francesco Bonami, develops this intimate subject about the path of a work of art from the artist’s studio till the collector house. Displayed in the two locations, the part in Dogana del Mare totally fits the purpose. The light inside is incredible, and gives a proper shape to all the pieces.

After owning Christies, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, it seems that François Pinault own a good part of Venice, with Dogana del Mare, this taste maker has written his play in the history of the art market, to be continued with his son ?…

To celebrate Yayoi Kusama's eightieth year, Gagosian Gallery is presenting until June 27 two major interrelated exhibitions of her recent work in New York and Los Angeles. The exhibitions will overlap to provide a bi-coastal overview of the renowned doyenne of the international art world.




Prepared for several years, Yayoi Kusama conceived some astonishing new works, such as “Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity (2009), a mesmerizing "infinity room" that operates on a system of simple yet ingenious optical devices. In a dark void, a delicate, shimmering mirage unfolds around the viewer, a myriad of gleaming lights that reproduce and reflect endlessly upon each other in golden silence. Titles of recent figurative paintings, in which worms, eyes, and other more indeterminate biomorphic forms abound, reflect a preoccupation with mortality, as well as with enlightenment, solitude, nothingness, and the mysteries of the physical and metaphysical universe. And, among all these spirited emanations, the sublime Infinity Net paintings -- from austere achromes to vibrant psychedelic contrasts -- continue to depict the undepictable in a steady, insistent pulse.”

In New York, we will also have the pleasure to see an application of her famous polka dots in a spectacular and vibrating yellow and black installation, also playing with our view. These polka dots are a recurrent motif issued from her childhood's hallucination, which she explored since the fifties. In her Manifest of Obliteration, she said “ My life is a polka dots lost among a million of others polka dots”. She thus developed this idea all her life, but always renewing the forms of expressions. Besides, Yayoi Kusama can be considered as a complete artist, since she also made films, fashion design and wrote novels and poetry. Today, she lives and work in Japan. From her own decision, she  now lives in a mental hospital in Tokyo, nearby her studio.

The exhibitions will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Louise Neri, Robert Nickas, a New York-based critic and curator, and Midori Yamamura, a Fellow at CUNY Graduate Center who is completing her PhD on Kusama.

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto City, Japan in 1929. Her work is in the collections of leading museums throughout the world including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate Modern, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Major exhibitions of her work include Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Fukuoka, Japan (1987); Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York (1989); "Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama,1958-1969", LACMA, 1998 (traveling to Museum of Modern Art, New York, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo), 1998-99; Le Consortium, Dijon, 2000 (traveling to selected venues in Europe and Korea), 2001-2003; "KUSAMATRIX", Mori Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2004 (traveling to Art Park Museum of Contemporary Art, Sapporo Art Park, Hokkaido); "Eternity – Modernity", National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (touring Japan), 2004-2005; and "The Mirrored Years", Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2008, currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and traveling to the City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand later in 2009.


[Visual : YAYOI KUSAMA, Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity, 2009, Mixed media installation, 163 1/2 x 163 1/2 x 113 1/4 inches. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery]

We reviewed many of them for the past three months, and here they are, all together with the best art pieces and artists they have: during four days (from the 10 to the 14th of June), the 300 best galleries of the world gather at Basel, for his 40th edition and make also come all about 60 000 visitors, including the most important collectors of the art world.




Yes, it seems that despite the crisis, all our favorite galleries answered ‘present’ to this unique meeting. The ones we follow because of their singularity: The David Zwirner Gallery, who warmly opened his three spaces for Adel Abdessemed last month; Kasey Kaplan, who presented the unique delflated Jeff Koons’ rabbits by Jonathan Monk; Cheim & Read, who made us dream with the paintings and sculptures of Paul Morrison, Dvir Gallery, with whom we discovered Israelien contemporary art. We will surely see some political opinions with Pace Wildenstein Gallery and Deitch Project. And of course there will be the one we can’t not have heard of because they discovered the artists of today and have now the most expansive artists of the moment: Daniel Templon, Marianne Goodman, Gagosian, Sonnabend, Thaddaeus Ropac, Acquavella galleries, Alexander and Bonin, Emmanuel Perrotin,.. Modern Art will also be largely displayed with for instance the prestigious Moeller Fine Arts etc.

Thus, with about 2.500 artists, there is for all tastes, all genders, all times, but there will be no room for a word about the crisis. Seven days before the opening, this word is banished from the vocabulary: After the crash of Art Basel Miami fair, the Armory Show and the qualified FIAC, it the last opportunity to sell... and the journalists will run quickly to see the results and build theories about the art market future. Therefore, everything is made to make us forget about this keyword: an abundance of events, shows, and innovative ways of presentations were greatly thought : As the last five years Art Unlimited, curated by Simon Lamunière will showcase large scale sculptures and installations, lives shows and performances by for instance Yoshimoto Nara, the Indian Bharti Kher, Nan Goldin and Chen Zhen… Added to that, Art Premier will explore new curatorial aspects by engaging either a dialogue between two artists from two different generations, or the presentation of an exceptional art historical material by a single artist. In this section we will see quiet a few French galleries like the GB agency, Nathalie Obadia and Aline Vidal, and very special New Yorker galleries like Tracy Williams, Jack Shainman, Liguel Abreu. Art Statement will be the section dedicated to discover emerging artists and rising galleries. Also, public art project will be displayed for the passerby at Isteinerstrasse. An interesting program of conversations and films are also planned.

The best for the end, an historical moment not to miss, is the experimental show Il Tempo del Postino, directed by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parenno, Anri Sala, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, will showcase, rather through time and space, works of art by the greatest artists of the moment, for instance Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney & Jonathan Bepler, Tacita Dean, Trisha Donnelly, Olafur Eliasson, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon… Lets hope the most important Art fair of the world will continue to shine, despite the crisis.