Installation (Installation)

Foreigners Everywhere is a series of neon signs in several different languages. Named for Stranieri Ovunque, an anarchist collective from Turin, the work embodies and projects the ambivalence of their name into various sites and contexts. Lacking context, the neon suggests a factual statement, xenophobic threat, and evokes the estrangement of feeling foreign in a global society, a circumstance legible by the targeted populations.

Painting (Painting)

Rojas’s two pieces in the Kadist Collection— Untitled (four-legged…) and Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) —are representative of her pictorial style which uses bold colorful blocks of paint and female and animal characters. While Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) does not depict any actual women, it nevertheless alludes to gender roles and the power of the female gaze. Apparently playful, this scene of two animals has an ominous quality: A bird and a hedgehog confront at each other and the bird appears to be poking, even eating the hedgehog’s eye.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Monteverdi Ici by Laure Prouvost is a non-narrative video work that depicts the back of the artist’s naked body standing, with her back towards the camera in a field. Her bare arms gesture outwards and forwards, as if her movements are influencing the wild flowers billowing in the foreground. Alternating between the artist’s body and imagery of leaves, flowers, cats, and caterpillars, Prouvost speaks directly to the viewer, stating: “The world behind that field would be here, the world would enter through here”.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

The piece consists of sculpture of 10 elements, among them: a globe, a picture of a gorilla, a chair, scrabble letters, 3 glasses of black ink, a book whose title is illuminated by the beam of a 8mm projector, a pair of boots, etc. The display is a collection of selected objects chosen in response to the reading of a text by Alain Badiou (the first chapter of the seminar “Le réel est l’impasse de la formalisation; la formalisation est le lieu de passe en force du réel” from February 4, 1975). The elements are a visual way to question the transposition of an idea into reality.

Painting (Painting)

Rojas’s two pieces in the Kadist Collection— Untitled (four-legged…) and Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) —are representative of her pictorial style which uses bold colorful blocks of paint and female and animal characters. While Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) does not depict any actual women, it nevertheless alludes to gender roles and the power of the female gaze. Apparently playful, this scene of two animals has an ominous quality: A bird and a hedgehog confront at each other and the bird appears to be poking, even eating the hedgehog’s eye.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

By testing the limits of identification with the camera’s point of view, Delphi Falls cycles through multiple subjectivities. The film misuses more traditional narrative conventions -the suggestion of a story, the anchoring of actors as characters- to have the viewer constantly questioning who or what they are, and where they are located in the film’s world. Delphi Falls was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial film program.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Dragon is the Frame by Mary Helena Clark is an elegy that is somewhat paradoxically organized as a film noir or murder mystery, one that pays direct homage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo . But the parts don’t fit, and it is only in the eventual recognition of this faux raccord that Clark’s higher purpose becomes apparent. As we hear Bernard Herrmann’s score, we see the Golden Gate Bridge, Mission Dolores, and other Vertigo locations in the present day.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

For the project Aguas calientes Gabriel Chaile exchanged silverware from three popular soup kitchens (mutual aid organizations to provide food for people in need) in Buenos Aires to brand new cooking utensils to shape his project. Chaile then reworks the used goods, welding and engraving the names of their sites of provenance and imagery from local indigenous community’s visual repertoire; faces from vessels and iconography present in Cultura Tafí, Condorhuasi, Alamito, Santa María, Candelaria, and Ciénaga. Through this operation, he translates the idea of the “communal pot” into a meeting point for mutual cooperation and political resistance.

Textile (Textile)

Monteverdi Ici – Deeply, Feeling Filling the World by Laure Prouvost is a tapestry that references a video by the artist entitled Monteverdi Ici (2018). Both artworks feature a woman’s naked body as a central visual element. In the video, the woman’s body is outdoors, with her back to the camera, moving her arms gently through the surrounding flowers.

Painting (Painting)

The series Clouds paintings by Benoît Maire features oil on canvas works in varying format, in which the artist depicts clouds, using a variety of tools, including a spray gun, paintbrush, or palette knife. The cloud motif in this series of paintings questions the limits of abstraction by playing with the concept of pareidolia—a psychological phenomenon by which we recognize familiar shapes in landscapes, clouds, or ink stains. Through his careful composition and use of pentimenti, Maire invites the viewer to project their imagination onto these colorful clouds.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Parle Ment Metal Woman Welcoming You is a character originated from a series of works combining sculpture and video with a specific role— lying on the floor playing a romantic elevator tune, this Metal Woman welcomes and flirts with viewers in the space where she is posed. The characters from this series take the form of wrecked silhouettes made of sticks baring pink muscles and breasts with disproportionate LCD TV screen heads. The screen heads broadcast an endless flow of texts and images, speaking for and animating these bodies.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Stong Sory Vegetables , Laure Prouvost explains that she woke up one morning and that some vegetables had fallen from the sky on her bed, making a hole in her ceiling. Each video, in this series, is an odd still life representation turning everyday elements into imaginary and funny stories. A tomato, an onion, a lemon and a carrot are displayed in front of the monitor as relics.