The Ten Best Shows To See In Paris This Spring

Gilbert & George at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

The Ten Best Shows To See In Paris This Spring
By Hillary Dever

Takesada Matsutani- From the 60’s to Today- Galerie Richard
March 17th – May 5th 2012

Galerie Richard will present a retrospective exhibition of the talented Japanese artist, Takesada Matsutani entitled, From the 60’s to Today, which will run from March 17th to May 5th. This being Matsutanis’ first retrospective exhibition in France, the artists work will display an array of powerfully sensual mediums, using a flow paint, which allows the artist to also reflect a flow of time that not only surround his personal life, but also the ever powerful flow of living. The artist’s strong use of the color black conveys the artist’s overall intent of a feeling of tension.

Thomas Bayrle’s second showing at the Air de Paris Gallery will showcase two of his most significant pieces; two pictures from 1978 and 1980 which have been painted and repainted but yet still unfinished because by their very nature, they cannot be finished. Bayrle, always using his past experiences as a factory worker as inspiration, focuses his work on the industrialization of Europe in the 1960’s with cars, freeways and cities being the base elements of each piece, while exploring how each element of communication can somehow come together almost on the same assembly line.

Ariel Schlesinger will present a solo exhibition showcasing his continued explorations of the aesthetic and conceptual possibilities of fuel and fire. Schlesinger reinvents everyday objects, such as bicycles, packing tape, paper, and printers, into agents of romantic and daring fantasy and uses his great imagination to create interactive sculptures such as household printers re-jigged to print directly on walls, chairs with “padding” shaped by a large stack of curved paper, and sidewalk blocks with reconfiguring lanes painted upon them. His series of conjoined objects, such as two letter-size pages moving and touching one another as if making love and rolls of masking tape uniting like Siamese twins, are only few of his numerous pieces that use both gas and flames to explore dangerous risk and hazardous situations that can be beautifully controlled.

Valerio Adami, a major figure in the Narrative Figuration movement, is returning to Galerie Templon with a new twofold exhibition. The Italian painter is unveiling the photography he practiced at the beginning of his career in the 1960s and is also showing his latest paintings, produced between 2009 and 2012 and featuring the familiar elegance of the artist-philosopher’s compositions. Adami uses photography to capture the many places he has visited on his travels, from India to New York while chronicling the life of an artist. His photos bear witness to the development of his style, revealing his taste for composition and focus on the ordinary. Through the exhibit, one will see black and white images of hotel rooms, lobbies, trains and cafeteria chairs as well as paintings depicting the beginnings and end of an artistic journey through the century.

Gilbert & George- LONDON PICTURES-Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
Opening April 14th, 2012

Talented artist’s Gilbert & George will present a selection of their most recent pictures in their exhibition entitled, LONDON PICTURES; a series of 292 pictures, created by a long-standing collection of newspaper posters that have dominated current affairs over many years. The titles of the pictures correspond to words picked out by the artists, repeated in red in each subdivision of the image like a slogan. With the works focus being on how history has a way of repeating itself, through local and world dramas and crisis’ of society as a whole.

Gallery La Maison Rouge will stage the first major international exhibition of neon art from the 1940s to the present day. Hundreds of different pieces and work will be presented, with many being shown for the very first time. Artist’s that will have their work exhibited are; Lucio Fontana from the early 1950s, François Morellet, Bruce Nauman, Stephen Antonakos, Joseph Kosuth and Mario Merz from the 1960s, and some of the many contemporary artists working in this specific medium, such as Jason Rhoades, Sylvie Fleury and Claude Lévêque, all artists which use ‘noble’ gases, a group of chemical elements, and with common properties and under standard conditions, produce colored light that when an electric current is passed through creates neon lighting.

John Baldessari’s exhibition “Double Bill” consists of a new series of seven paintings on canvas through which Baldessari plays with the art historical canon, and finds his inspiration from works by the likes of De Kooning, Manet, Duchamp and Picabia. The artist’s poignant and often humorous juxtaposition of images suggests relationships, narratives and threads that break down as quickly as they are pieced together.

Marco Maggi-Turn Left- Galerie Xippas
April 12th- May 26th, 2012

For his first exhibition at the Xippas Gallery, Maggi invites us to follow a line that appears simple: it is a path made from reams of A4 paper aligned on the floor. Through his use of simple materials manufactured for everyone’s use; such as sheets of paper, aluminum, apples, or even envelopes, the artist unfurls a topographic map of details linked to everyday life, privileging the micro over the macro, and urges us to come closer to his meticulous objects. Through his work, Marco Maggi proposes and promotes moments of suspension depicted of living in this society where speed reigns while spectacular images pile up one after another that trivialize and cancel each other.

Oliver Urman’s exhibit which focuses upon decoratism, reflecting how in today’s society we live within a décor and how every object or work of art is enclosed inside of a decore with no neglected put aside objects. Urman believes that everything systematically makes part of what we use as décor and that which gives the real value of a decorative element, and that Decorality is the force that the object acquires when present within an interior.

Through Somnambular Laws, is the first exhibition in Paris of the work of Elise Florenty and Marcel Türkowsky, which is devoted essentially to their recent output. Since they started working together, these two artists have shared the same fascination with the poetic power of language, through fables, spells and instructions. For this exhibition, they involve visitors in strolling in spaces punctuated by systems and instructions for an immersion to be lived through, like the crossing of a history governed by underground laws.