Fashion Photographer Pauline Darley

Good evening contemporary art lovers!
Me, myself, and I by fashion photographer Pauline Darley. What an adorable girl and so gifted! Thanks to one of a very good friend of ours, my "wifey", Solweig, I got the chance to discover Pauline's work. She lives and works in Paris since 2010. After studying communication and doing several internships in the world of art and image, she progressively became a professional photographer doing mostly ads for fashion magazines  and celebs.

Copyright Pauline Darley

http://www.paulinedarley.com/index.php

Giuseppe Penone takes Madison Square Park in New York City

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers! 
Get ready New York City... As you may know French public got a chance to admire works made by this incredible artist in Versailles:
 http://www.hauteliving.com/2013/07/giuseppe-penone-takes-versailles/376679/

Penone is an Italian born artist (1947) who started working professionally in 1968 in the Garessio forest, near where he was born. He is the younger member of the Italian movement named Arte Povera.  Artists from this movement attack the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture. Penone's work is concerned with establishing a contact between man and nature. He still actively produces new work.

Renowned Italian artist Giuseppe Penone will be presenting three monumental, 40-foot tall bronze trees in NYC's Madison Square Park from September 26, 2013 through February 9, 2014. The installation, titled Ideas of Stone, is part of the Mad. Sq. Art program – the free, contemporary art program of the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

Known for his work with natural materials and forms to explore relationships between man and nature, Penone has crafted twisted, deconstructed, and hollowed trees that incorporate nails, boulders, carvings, and more to convey the effect of human interaction with the natural wœorld. The three works are titled Triplice (Triple), Idee di pietra – 1303 Kg di luce (Ideas of stone – 1303 Kg of light), and Idee di pietra–Olmo (Ideas of stone – Elm).

Steven Sebring RevolutionS the art world!!!

When I got into the Armory to see his Revolution opening on Lex a few weeks ago, well how could I describe what I saw and how could I talk about it?!… The only words that came right in my mind when I first looked at it were like: WAOUH - BOOM - EXPLOSION - ATOMIC - REVOLUTION - FRIGHTENING - FEAR - EXCITEMENT - EROTICISM - ATTRACTION - SEXUALITY - SENSUALITY - DISTURBING - OBSESSION - CONVULSIVE BEAUTY - TRANCE - AND ROCK'N'ROLL … 

For the really first time in my life I felt confused. I've got so many different feelings that all came in the mean time by only watching a work of art. I was shaking, feeling warm and cold, impressed, envious, excited… well my only advice would be to check it by yourself! Each of his work is the combination of painting-photography-dance-music-theater-fashion… sound and smell might be the two only things that were missing. But luckily for us we were able to watch many videos related to the works on a huge screen while drinking a really good glass of red wine. So in a way he made it!

Featuring a wonderful, nice and easy to reach girl that everybody knows, Coco Rocha, he showed us a large panel of incredible and never-seen-before works. Coco who's a supermodel well-known for being involved in the art world, struck the pose and danced  - she is a professional dancer, Irish dance - for Steven like two-three years ago when they started woking on this project. Coco wasn't the only one who was striking the pose for him at that time. Another Coco had to be quiet too! Coco Karol who was the dancer painted in white in the revolving set and  the model for the nude descending stair case photos. Steven's son appeared in one of the videos and a male model too. Why two years of silence? Well it might be because Steven simply invented a new way of capturing images!! Until now they obviously had to be very careful as successfully inventions attire envious people. 

Model: Coco Karol

He built a sort of "igloo" in his studio inside which one models strike the pose, dance, act or whatever the artist want them to do. But THE THING is that he is able to shoot them in like one second as the stage of the "igloo" is surrounded by cameras. I didn't even count them there are so many! (hhmm yes I have been there and I saw it!!! ) Each camera shoots or films each different sides of the model. 43 cameras for example will give you 43 different pictures of the same model striking one and only one pose. If Duchamp might use to need many hours of work to paint his Nu Descendant Un Escalier, it only took Steven five seconds to shoot Coco Karol descending stairs to get the kind-of-the-same result.

The videos were really cool with some touches of both classicism and modernity. One of my favorite: Coco Rocha wearing a black outfit whose the skirt kinda looked like a "cage". An amazing dress designed by Malgorzata Dudek who already has been called the new Alexander Mc Queen!! It reminded me Gauthier designs and one of the most famous Chanel advertising featuring Vanessa Paradis as a bird in a cage. Those who remember it will understand me…

Model: Coco Rocha

The Red Series is, according to me, the most impressive. Coco Rocha is wearing a long red dress that floats in the air at every moment of her moves. Can you picture her dancing and spinning around? She is like a goddess, the goddess of the dark side of Steven's mind? If only one could get into his crazy-creative but very nice mind! The color red means passion, love, sex, eroticism but also evil, hell, fire, tension. Also the beauty of the model could be the face of the Evil, or the incarnation of Life. Question is: on which side is she and to whom is she gonna give birth…

Model: Coco Rocha

Steven Sebring, more that just an artist to watch, to me a real genius who clearly invented a 3, 4 even 5D work of art: it is a photograph that looks like a painting whose the main character is a fashion model dancing on stage and playing a character. What else? You feel the movement, you feel the wavy dress floating around you and you are even able to hear the music that goes with it if you really pay attention and get into it…

Tilda Swinton's art performance "The Maybe" at MoMA NYC 2013

Good morning contemporary art lovers!
One remembers Marina Abramovic's performance at the MoMa a few years ago... Well it's Tilda Swinton's turn now! The Academy Award-winning actress and recent Davide Bowie music video star is performing art on an unexpected display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.Tilda's live performance was unexpected for the visitors but the museum has actually been working on staging "The Maybe" for seven years. "The Maybe" was originally staged by Swinton in London at the Serpentine Gallery in 1995.

She here personifies the contemporary "Sleeping beauty", dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt: she's lying in a coffin, sleeping while visitors are watching her through the sides of a glass box. The curator of this incredible show is Large Klaus Bisenbach, the same man who was behind the blockbuster Abramovic's retrospective. Everybody around the world seems to be super excited by this exhibition and one can't count anymore all the tweets about it: comedian Patton Oswalt tweeted on Saturday: "Tilda Swinton is sleeping in a glass box on random days at MoMA in New York all year. And I just thought of a brilliant heist movie..."

"The Maybe" will appear randomly in different locations this year. There is no published schedule for its appearance, no artist's statement released, no museum statement beyond this brief context, no public profile or image issued. The luckiest have been able to seen her yesterday! ;)

My New Favorite: Tasya Van Ree!!!

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers!
Definitely my favorite photographer right now! She is an amazing artist and a wonderful photographer. Halfway between art and fashion, her pictures - mostly black-and-white photographies - are inspiring, intense, and some of them kinda remind us the convulsive beauty dear to the Surrealists: she sublimes the feminine body by staging it in sensual, lascivious, erotic, and suggestive poses. "Tasya van Ree has always been intrigued by the everyday wonders of the visual world.

"She  has always been intrigued by the everyday wonders of the visual world. The sense of expansive awareness that for van Ree is a prerequisite to photography enables her to capture the small everyday flashes of insight that come when we are open to them and often go before we can fully grasp or appreciate them. Her extraordinarily vivid images are also a testimony to her eye for form and composition. Her photographs are infused with romanticism, darkness, intimacy, and a certain lyrical quality. They also capture the essence of the people, the landscape, and the intricacies of both the animate and inanimate worlds, and are a sort of meditation in seeing the powerful testaments between the relationship of human presence and transitory nature."

READ MORE: http://tasyavanree.com
Copyright Tasya Van Ree

Ron Arad at the Downtown Gallery, Paris

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers!
Lemme tell you about this wonderful exhibition: Ron Arad at the Downtown Gallery in Paris. Ron Arad (born 1951) is an Israeli architect, artist and designer.

He's well known for his "furniture/sculpture". He only realized unique pieces or limited edition and some of his tables climb walls instead of being centered in a room! It's up to the owner to hang the "table" on a wall if he's afraid to damage the piece by using it as a coffee table. Also all the shapes are biomorphic and always made in steel, his favorite medium. one remembers his famous shelves Bookworm (1994) which is still produced by the Italian company Kartell. Exhibition runs til the 1st of December...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhfl-YNFi90&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEWGi5DPmzY&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th28XevS1Nk

Jean-Baptiste Huynh "Remanence" at the Louvre

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers!
Yesterday night the luckiest of us have had the chance to admire the latest photographs of Jean-Baptiste Huynh at the Louvre. He's a French-born (1966) photographer who's well known for his portraits in black and white. His work is focused on light and lighting. Wether it's a portrait or a still life, the creative process for each shooting is based on essence: an often single subject, a single source of light, a neutral bottom in background. Sonnabend Gallery in NY represents his work, around the notion of transition and of course focusing on the light. The Louvre invited him to exhibit a new series inspired by the museum collection...

In this exhibition he revisits some of the masterpieces that belong to the collection of the Louvre in his own way. A piece of a Greek face, a twilight landscape, the flame of a candle, a skull made of crystal, a strainer... are all highlighted on a deep black background.

Exhibition runs from October 4th to December 31st 2010.

Sigalit Landau: "Soil Nursing" at the Kamel Mennour Gallery

Good morning contemporary art lovers!

The Kamel Mennour Gallery - one of the most famous and well known galleries in Paris - is pleased to announce its latest exhibition which choose to show the new work of Sigalit Landau, an Israeli-born artist (1969) who lives and works in Tel Aviv. As you may know Kamel Mennour is a French self-taught art dealer who became one of the best because of his passion for art and his relation with the artists. Their collaboration started a few years ago and its new exhibition is focused on three videos and several photographs that basically show the viewer the work done by the workers in the olive groves. 

After a very warm welcoming, Kamel explained us and told us about Sigalit work, her inspirations, her goals… Palestinians workers are working on Israeli lands. The tone is set. It's difficult to pay attention to the intensity of her work if we only look at the pictures. the sizes of the videos are huge, monumentales and they reprensent the collect of olives. At the first sight, it seems to be a very calm and peaceful day and suddently the machines are setting off. All the serenity of the scene is gone... We think about the duality between Israelis and Paslestinians. The small farmers, who used to get in the harvest hardly and with their own hands, are suddenly stumped by the arrival of those new machines. The first rom is though : the duality between Israelis ans Palestinians ; the calm of a harvest and the harsh sound of the machines, the sunlight that one can see through the branchs and the sound of the olives falling down from the trees…

In the second room, she decided to show another side of her work. She's one of those women who got the chance to become a mother later in life. This room is dedicated to her maternity, to her fears, to her apprehensions. Her sculptures, all made out of different types of marble, are the perfect representations of pillows that help women to breast-feed their babies.

Once again one can feel the contrast between the unbearable noise of the other room and the serenity of this one. One wants to talk in a low voice !!

Exhibition runs until July 25 and I really encourage all of you that are in Paris to go to see this exhibition ! 

Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan at the MoMA

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers!
For those who may have missed the opening a few days ago, on July 1^st, it’s one of the most interesting exhibition in New York this summer. Indeed this retrospective is the largest exhibition outside Italy of works by Italian-born artist Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994). This wonderful show was organized by the MoMA in collaboration with the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Tate Modern in London.

Alighiero Boetti was a conceptual artist often related to the art movement Arte Povera which is an art movement that was created at the end of the 60s in Italy. Artists used to attack the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture, and even questioning whether art as the private expression of the individual still had an ethical reason to exist. They are well known for using found objects in their works. Antoni Tapies, Alberto Burri, Pierro Manzoni and Lucio Fontana can also be involved in the Arte Povera but Boetti was one of the leading artists. 

The exhibition is organized according to a chronological order. The first pieces to be seen are his sculptural works, his objects, made in wood, cardboard and aluminum. He gave priority to natural materials… At the beginning of his career his works were essentially made to experiment materials and measurement. Time after time he started to explore notions of duality and multiplicity, order and disorder… Each gallery hidden a trap, a trick, that symbolizes the indissoluble link between the artist and his admirers.

"This exhibition will celebrate the material diversity, conceptual complexity, and visual beauty of Boetti’s work, bringing together his ideas about order and disorder, non-invention, and the way in which the work addresses the whole world, travel, and time, proving him to be one of the most important and influential international artists of his generation." Exhibition is on view until October 1^st.

Isa Genzken: Rose II - New Museum

Good morning contemporary art lovers!
Each time I walk by the New Museum, seeing the twenty-eigth feet tall rose that is standing in front of the facade reminds the roses made by Will Ryman. For those who may don't remember Will's roses were blooming on Park Avenue for four-six months in the beginning of 2011. At this time all the New Yorkers were living in the Wonderland!

Isa Genzken is a German-born artist who was born in 1948. She lives and works in Berlin. She studied fine arts and art history in Hamburg and was the subject of a major retrospective in 2009 in Cologne and then in London. She used to be married to Gerhard Richter who was her teacher. She is best know for her sculpture Rose (1993). It is a single long-stemmed rose made from enamelled stainless steel that towers eight metres above Leipzig's museum district. A second version Rose II (2007) is standing in front of the facade of the New Museum. 

Genzken is one of the crucial figure of the Post-war contemporary art scene. Her works, sculpture essentially, are made of many different materials and media such as video, photography, film, works on paper and canvas, collages and books. The replica of the first sculpture Rose is her first public artwork in the United States. She's trying to explore through her work the way in which each one perceive objects, images, nature... She integrates the notions of architecture, nature of mass culture by creating unique works has the enormous scale.

Looking back on that experience, she has commented, “To me, New York had a direct link with sculpture… (It) is a city of incredible stability and solidity.” The installation of Rose II can be seen as a tribute to a place Genzken continues to love.

"The Spirit Level" at the Gladstone gallery

Good evening contemporary art lovers!
The Gladstone gallery is one of my favorite gallery in NYC. For those who like Minimal and Conceptual art. They represent artists such like Sol Lewitt, Dan Flavin, Banks Violette, Donald Judd, Fausto Melotti, Robert Ryman, Damian Ortega, Mario Merz and many others.... Ugo Rondino, who is also represented by the gallery is the curator of the new exhibition. Ugo Rondino is a major Swiss artist who was born in 1962. His installations, which often include a performance by the artist himself and keep track video, depict a central character, alter ego of the artist, a clown, a figure of sadness and disappointment. Once he said: "I'm an artist first—but I like to have other people's art around me."

The Spirit Level is a group show featuring 19 artists curated by Ugo Rondino. The exhibition takes places in both galleries: the one on 24th street and the one on 21st street and is organized like an initiation. One advices you to start your visit at the 21st street space with Peter Buggenhout's three and leaning constructions, parrafin-coated crepe-paper leaves made by Martin Boyce, black printed-stars by 

Joe Bradley, two particolored, unstretched canvases by Sam Gillian...

In the other gallery one can see the three giant - four-foot-high - penises made by Sarah Lucas and made of bubblegum-pink,plaster and rubber. In another room Hans Josephson's small odalisques are grouped with Alan Shields's large triangular canvases. Works exposed balance each other even if they seem paradoxical at first. they are captivating, erotic, fun, innocent ...

Exhibition just opened a few weeks ago and will be on view until April 12!!

MoMA presents "Cindy Sherman"

Good morning contemporary art lovers!
To those who might have decided to go to NYC for Eastern, there is one exhibition you definitely have to see! At the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor. This exhibition is curated by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, and Lucy Gallun, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography. Cindy Sherman is an American-born artist who lives and works in New York. She's well known for her conceptual portraits in which ones she's the only model, always disguised and masked!

Throughout her career - more than 30 years - she has captured herself in a range of guises and personas which are at turns amusing and disturbing, distasteful and affecting. she was always interested in the role of women in society, human behavior, to society of consumption and its impact on human... She has created a myriad of characters using wigs, costumes, makeup or other accessories. To make her photographs she had to stage herself in enclosed places, in the middle of intersections, in public places... 

Bringing together more than 170 photographs, this retrospective survey traces the artist’s career from the mid 1970s to the present. The exhibition will explore famous themes such as artifice and fiction; cinema and performance; horror and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy tale; and gender and class identity.

Sherman has selected films from MoMA’s collection, which will be screened in MoMA’s theaters during the course of the exhibition. Exhibition will be on view until June 11th!!

Guggenheim presents “Choices”, a major retrospective of John Chamberlain.

Good morning contemporary art lovers!
This exhibition is curated by Senior Curator Susan Davidson and supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Chamberlain was first celebrated at the Guggenheim in a 1971 retrospective. This show examines over than one hundred works made during his sixty-year carrer. One can see works from Chamberlain’s earliest monochromatic iron sculptures and experiments in foam, Plexiglas, and paper, to his final large-scale foil pieces, which have never been shown in the United States.

John Chamberlain is an American-born artist who was born in Indiana in 1927. He briefly studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the avant-garde Black Mountain College. He created energic, dynamic, and vibrant sculptures hewn from disused car parts that can remind us sculptures made by the French-born artist Cesar . They both brought the Abstract Expressionist style of painting into three dimensions. Chamberlain created originale and unique sculptures not only by the materials he used but also because he painted them ! There are examples of airbrushing from the 1960s, drips and pours from the 1970s, sandblasting from the 1980s, and freehand and stenciled patterns from the 1990s forward. The  sculptures range from the size of a fist to the girth of a generous hug to the height of a tree. Most recently he used vintage cars. The sculptures grew in scale and possess a new-found gravity. He was often inspired by small sculptures that served as models for larger ones.

He's an outsider. He's not related to any particular art movement and he's well-known as a standard-bearer of sculptural practice. Chamberlain's inherent creativity was enhanced by a passion for music and language, which gave way tot he noted color and movement in his works. His work is represented in many major public collections. He also made abstract colour paintings, films, and photographs. John Chamberlain: CHoices opened at the Guggenheim on February 24th and will remain on view through May 13th, after which it will travel to Bilbao, Spain. 
   

Rafael Barrios takes Park Avenue!

Good morning contemporary art lovers!
To all the Upper East Siders who walk everyday on Park, I think I can answer to a lot of questions you may have. From the Waldorf Astoria to the Park Avenue Armory, 10 sculptures made by Venezuelan artist Rafael Barrios, born in Louisiana in 1947 and grew up in Venezuela. He's now living between Paris, caracas and Miami. He's the second latin artist invited to participate to this event after Fernando Botero.

The inauguration of the sculptural display will be schedule on the night of the March 2, just before the opening of ADAA (the Art Dealers Association of America that takes place from March 8 through March 12). Characterized for its geometry and conceptual approach, the ludic work by Barrios is an exploration of fundamental principles of perception-such as dynamism, balance, and distortion-that stems from the reinterpretation of elemental abstract forms from everyday life. In this sense, the works that stand out are his well-known sculptural series of tables, chairs, and doors. Not lacking in humor, these works explore the sense of three-dimensionality. His works, made of stainless and acrylic lacquer are definitely made for being outside. 

Those monumental and geometric forms are a wonderful trompe l'oeil with a profound playful sense.

The Ten Commandments at the Discovery Time Square

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers!
The parchment was discovered with 900 other manuscripts in 1947 in Khirbet Qumran in Transjordan. Property of Israel, the parchment will be exhibited only two weeks at the Discovery Time Square until the January 2nd and will be a part of a new exhibition: “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times” curated by Risa Levitt Kohn.

This very small document (18 x 3 inches) is the oldest known text of the ten Commandments, the most complete and best preserved. Time after time, the parchment became darker and the ink was discolored. The scroll can’t be exposed under the light and is usually kept in a safe in Israel. Experts date it 51 BC but his author remain unknown. Many scholars believe that all the manuscripts, including the Ten Commandments one, were written by members of a sect who broke away from mainstream Judaism and lived in the desert.

The scroll was discovered by a young shepherd. He threw away a pebble in a cave and it broke a crock. When he came the day after he realized that he found an archeological siteThat’s how the parchments could have been showed to the world. 

Damien Hirst invades the world!!

Good morning contemporary art lovers!
As you may know Damian Hirst is about to invade the eleven galleries that Gagosian owns all over the world. To those who thinks that he is way too exposed, well too bad for you because his Spot Paintings will be exhibited in January 2012 all in the same time in the galleries. 

Ten years ago, Hirst started thinking about how he could dominate the world. As the Tate Modern and Saatchi didn't want to be a part of his project, he asked his art dealer to be his sponsort. After like six months of intensive researchs, 300 paintings will be hung on the walls of the eleven galleries. if some of the paintings will be on sale, most of them are lended by private collectors. these will be exposed in the closest gallery to where they are. For example paintings that belong to European collections will be exhibited in the London gallery. Most of the circular ones are located in the East Coast of the US. They will be exposed in New York. 
The Spot Paintings series represent the battle between handmade and industrial work. By far one can say that these paintings were made by a machine. But the closest you are the more you realize they were handmade. One can see holes made by compasses, lines of pencil... 

Damien Hirst "The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011" will open simultaneously in Paris, New York, Beverly Hills, Romw, Athens, Geneva, Hong Kong and London on January 12th and will end in February/March, depends on locations.

Retrospective of Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim's

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers! As you may know, Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian-born artist (1960) who lives and works in New York. Well-know as a provocateur and a prankster, he's also a tragic poet who creates some of the most disturbing, interesting, shocking and funiest sculptures of our times. His work is satirical, caustic, humourous, but deeply serious and intense in its scathing cultural critique. Through his sculptures he tries to reveal contradictions and problems of today's society.

One won't forget his performances (such as: Errotin, the rabbit , 2000. He persuaded his galerist Emmanuel Perrotin to be dressed like an enormous pink rabbit with a giant pink phallus for one entire month), his hyperrealistic sculptures (like The Ninth Hour, 1999, that represents the Pope Jean-Paul II hit by a meteorite and sold at Christies for $3 million.) or his obessional use of taxidermy that presents a state of apparent life premised on actual death (such as Novecento, 1997: a taxidermy horse with leather slings qnd lmetal frame that is supposed to be hanging from the ceiling.)...

Architecture of the museum lends itself perfectly to this exhibition. In the same vein as Duchamp his work is full of ready mades that he uses in his own special way. The main installation hung from the ceiling seems to be so light and fragile! Most of the works he produced since 1989 can be seen here. Exhibition runs until January 22nd...

"Uncursed"! Yoko Ono at the Lelong Gallery

Good evening contemporary art lovers!
Uncursed: a super cool exhibition that's actually an installation of of doors and figurative transparent sculptures. Very conceptual and incomprehensible for the most of the viewers this show however must be seen!

Once Yoko said: " when we were children, we learnt at our elementary school how the warrior, Shikanosuke Yamanaka, vowed to endure seven misfortunes and eight sufferings, thereby giving all the negative things to him that would have been given to the people of the city. I was so impressed with his selfless devotion to people, I wanted to be like him when I grew up. Then I realized that so many challenging situation were given to me in life. Much later, I wondered if it would not be better to ask for seven good fortunes and eight treasures... which I promptly did. It changed my life".

How do they stand on the floor of the gallery by themselves? What is it supposed to be behind each door? Why is there a transparent sculpture almost next to each door? Do they have their own signification? Are they supposed to figure the eight treasures Yoko talked about?? So many questions asked as soon as one gets into the gallery...

Claude Cahun, Jeu de Paume, Paris... Last days!!

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers!
Writer, actress, photographer, Claude Cahun, a French artist (1894-1954), left behind her a very intimate, poetic and autobiographic work which was focused on questioning mankind, sexuality, homosexuality, transvestism... Her self-portraits are probably the most interesting of her works. One cannot say at the first sight if it's a man or a woman!

A few connoisseurs know her work. She has been unknown for a long time as if her work, which is very intimate, was appreciated only by a few experts and art collectors in the vein as artists like Pierre Molinier, Victor Brauner, Unica Zurn... Claude Cahun, whose real name was Lucy Schwob, was the niece of writer Marcel Schwob and the great niece of writer Leon Cahun. She was a close to the Surrealists and involved in politics between the First and Second World Wars. Her girlfriend, Suzanne Malherbe (aka Marcel Moore), was a painter and an engraver. They were faithful to each other until the death of Claude.

If artists such Pierre Molinier or Man Ray used to represent themselves as a woman, Claude Cahun often photographed herself as a guy! She had at her disposal things like fabric, bedspreads, sheets and hangings to do the background and masks, gloves, capes, overgarment to reinvent herself. She definitely must have inspired artists such as Cindy Sherman who made herself as a clown, a man, a random girl and many other characters. At the beginning of the 20th Century, she was one of the first artists who explored questioning about identity and gender.

This amazing exhibition has to be seen! Beautiful, intimate, sensitive and disturbing. Runs til end of September.

Bernar Venet at the Chateau de Versailles

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers!
He's one of my favorite French contemporary artists. I remember the first time I met him a few years ago. I was invited in his house in South of France, a huge house full of works of art obviously. He succeed the French Xavier Veilhan, the American Jeff Koons and the Japanese Takashi Murakami as the artist who takes Versailles by storm!

Jean-Jacques Aillagon, who curated this exhibition, wished to focus on Bernar's work which questions the relation between art and nature, between art and architecture. His sculptures are enormous and heavy but they seem floating upon the surface. Arcs, whorls and lines appropriated Versailles and offer to the viewer an amazing and beautiful reflexion about classicism in parallel with modernity as well as a massive architecture and a minimalist design.

Like he said during an interview it was a challenge to create works that could be integrated in the landscape without being a blot on it! The best thing to do was to sculpt pieces especially for the site. According to him the best time of the day to see the show: at sunset, when light is reflected on the red-ocher steel...

One can call him the "French Richard Serra" because they both create monumental sculptures made out of steel. What do you think?? On view til November 2011