Installation (Installation)

Blue time is a song co-written by artists Saâdane Afif and Lili Reynaud Dewar. Collaborations are frequent in the work of the Afif, as is the case of the exhibition “Lyrics” which opened at the Palais de Tokyo in 2005, in which Saâdane Afif asked artists and musicians to translate his artworks into song lyrics and interpret them. The lyrics written on the wall produced a silent story, in a musical way that remains implicit (unlike certain installations by the artist where lyrics can be heard on headphones).

Installation (Installation)

Milton Friedman on the wonder of the free market pencil is an installation based on 42 blank pages. On the first page, one can read the original version in English of the liberal speech by Milton Friedman on “The Story of the pencil”. On the other pages, the same text has been translated into 41 different languages by using Google Translate, before coming back to English.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The drawing “Heidegger’s Cabin” (2005) is inspired by Martin Heidegger’s essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art.” During the artist’s stay in a high alpine area, near a lake reservoir, Bussmann related the landscape in her surroundings to her reading of Heidegger’s terms on the work of art and the meaning of a “thing.” In attempt to link spiritual heights to natural heights, Bussmann metaphorically relates the subjects of being and truth to a hiking path, and its different degrees of challenge and risk. In the drawings rather than finding the optimal path to reach ultimate meaning and materialization, Bussmann never arrives at “Heidegger’s Cabin,” and instead is led off the beaten track to areas she never discovered before. Upon her return from the mountains in 2004 and 2005, she continued to develop the series, leading up to 20 drawings on handmade paper that attempt to problematize Heidegger’s theory on artworks as “things” as bearers of traits, “things” confronting the world of perception, and “things” as formed matter.

Painting (Painting)

Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang is a series of landscapes in the Xiaoxiang region in the modern day Hunan Province, China, and was a popular subject of poems, drawings and paintings during the Song Dynasty (960–1279). Liang follows tradition by interpreting the historical subjects by classical Chinese artists including Dong Yuan (934–962 AD), Mu Xi (died in 1281 AD), Wen Weiming (1470–1559 AD). This reinterpretation represents the meeting point of the Xiang River and the Dongting Lake.

Painting (Painting)

In his new series of collages, Eichelmann takes his starting point from the “Belvedere Torso” in the Vatican Museum. In taking over and consuming the image of the sculpture, Eichelmann deconstructs its appearance by cutting it up, covering it, rendering the sculpture an allegorical ruin. Subverting the autonomy of the ancient sculpture in art history, Eichelmann creates a palimpsest through adding a new layer to the work in deconstructing and collapsing the famous sculpture.

Installation (Installation)

Future Gestalt re-imagines a large-scale sculpture “ Smoke” by Tony Smith as embodying a futuristic intelligence that communicates with a group of communitarians undergoing experimental psychotherapy. Future Gestalt is not a video of a performance, rather, it is a documentation of the last of four unscripted sessions of guided participation led by the artist. Through the title and form, the sessions suggest Gestalt therapy, promoted as a form of personal transformation in California at the Esalen Institute.