Through its diversity, complexity, density, contradictions, illusions, energy, disorder, fascinating associations and endless proposals, the urban landscape appears to be a relevant pattern for numerous young artists who focus on its idioms to develop their own private city.
The city offers the ingredients of a contemporary tale: rules, signs, habits, private and public places are the starting point for narratives. They are here to be consumed. Inhabitants. Street vendors. Walls. Lights. Buildings. Billboards. Cars. Stores. Colours. Food. White collar men. Roads. Lost puppets. Lost wallets. Tunnels.
Every dilemma, every story is already in the city.
The city as a metaphor of a creative mind: how to make things live together, how to organise the space, how to find an accurate place.
The Sightseeing Tour reveals an artistic and cultural map, motivated by the city. A comprehensive range of views and visions inspired by its most significant aspects and set free from its limits.
How to emerge from the urban white noise? How to stand out among a crowd of people?
The famous Warhol slogan (everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame) and the fascination with celebrities: you're no one if you're part of the crowd.
Anonymity in the confines of a city is somehow an artistic wonder and proposals to face it are definitely vivid. From Ayaco Nakamura's drawings, following a character on his way to leave the main human road to The Kingpins' performances that play with the notion of group and turn it into a parody, to the portraits of suburban teenagers taken by JR, every single way to become visible is questioned.
The pre-eminent individualistic scheme in all Western cities brings no answer to the sadness of the crowd but just emphasizes this feeling of similar individuals. Artists cope with this unsettling reality too: Gergo Kovatch and his disappearing shadow highlights this fear of losing one's own identity. Robert Schmaltz's balloon performance, marked with his name and location details, but condemned to explode or float away, draws the same line.
Leaving a long-lasting trace in the urban jungle. The wheel full of paint of Thomas Wiczak's bicycle will not be enough and the wall-painted messages of Zezao, drawn underground to be preserved, are kept like secret codes.
Far-removed from Western societies, combined with the struggle to be your own person in an oppressive environment, Ashkan Sadeghi's project deals with Iranian men and women, separated like containers, and puts an end to the individual, under the influence of religious dogma. In this case, the city offers no free zone.
Finally, the all-mighty crowd always wins. It could be so in the work of Brad Downey, whose group of steel access barriers, normally used to restrain the flow of people, strangely behaves like human bodies, a bunch of bodies.
The question of the identity of the individual, twisted, ignored or revealed, is more than ever linked to the dehumanised effect of the modern city. And artists fill the streets with lunatic ghosts.
The city is remarkable for its ability to integrate and swallow every new design, content, and structure like a hungry architectural monster with a belly that is never satisfied. Destruction and renovation. Low income housing juxtaposed against luxury high rises. Progress versus gentrification. The movement of its people, the sprawl of retail, the movement out from the center - the city moves like a beast.
The video of Eunji Kim and Jay Rechsteiner depicts a developing construction and reflects this idea of a city-in-progress. The growth of a biological organism.
Interaction within and against this huge moving system is another way to re-interpret the city. Nina Kurtela and her strange road signs and Paul B. Davis & Emma Davidson's London-inspired video game both offer drastic answers on how to tame this urban "animal".
What's the last resort when the illusion of control on the city-system vanishes? The search for a private space, protected from the unstable city, turns to a utopian idea. Homes too are under influence in the images of Tomoaki Makino. In tiny Japanese flats, people act strangely, inventing attitudes and ways to optimise the space they are living in, like new specimens of an urban disorder. Bewildered citizens trying their best in unpredictable cities: Harriet Birks' animation points out the modern schizophrenia while Pixel Nouveau gives the final urban vision with images of weird furnished rooms in which hybrid bodies find their way.
Last chance: leaving the city in Hans E. Thorsen's eye-catching mobile home. Cruising in the countryside, the caravan spreads its flashy orange colour all over and looks like a mini city of its own: a modern, exciting and moving element, fitting everywhere, like a skyscraper or a glass building that you can find in any city from Hong Kong to New York. The flexible city, affected by mundialisation, offers the same shops, the same streets and the same buildings everywhere. Kwayie Kuffour reveals the limits of an interchangeable urban landscape through his images of houses, inspired by Occidental villas but built in Africa, in isolated and unreal sites.
The city as a mad invention needs mad architects: artists could be the ones.
A look, even a glance is enough to see at every address on every corner, objects of desire. Hanging meat, mobile phones, bling, shoes, furniture, books, brands and undefined elements are waiting for anyone's attention. Inhabitants become viewers, with wide-open eyes.
Looking at the city through the window display lens: that's the project of Petar Mirkovi. A take-away window installation like a convenient surface to look at everything with a new appetite.
Many artists take advantage of this so-called transparency to develop more haunted themes. Things as they are displayed in the city become their raw material. Faces, in Apache's own private visual inventory. Photographs of friends define an organised and reassuring environment ready-to-show. Cars are the subjects in the images of Aurelien Mole. Full frontal portraits of American cars are immortalised, a testimony of faded colours, old brands and obsolete shapes. The back and forth of an elevator in Vincent Royer's video: a scene cut and repeated like an implacable urban mechanism, until it gets suspicious.
Mathew McWilliams' images choose darkness against transparency. At first sight, the bright and colourful traces lost in a black sea could not be linked to the bulbs of Christmas lighting. Like a reverse side of transparency, the city's phenomena turn into an abstract proposal.
This desire of an attractive clarity, this window display strategy, is however part of the deal between the city and its inhabitants. Even a classic TV symbol requires clearness, in spite of James Ford's diversion.
With Sanford Winterberger's video, the look through the window display comes to an end. The object of interest stays out of frame, out of sight. The camera is devoted to a group of people looking to at invisible reality, and reacting to it surprisingly. Interpreters, commentators or sharp watchers: this new generation of artists gives its own version of reality, displayed in the city like in a demonstration suitcase.
Text by Carine Soyer
4C is an initiative that explores culture, content, communication and commerce.
This year, GUM asked us to help start the discussion.
Before being able to understand the ways in which the 4Cs converge, it is imperative to understand the zeitgeist of the C that we know best - CULTURE.
We live it, we breathe it and we create it.
CULT-GEIST is an ever-evolving, global network of 3000+ emerging creatives - filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians, designers, promoters, curators, journalists, agents and much more.
We learn from our CULT-GEISTERS and work with them to make things happen – on our own and with brands.
CULT-GEIST is very proud to present the first 4C experience.
This year's incarnation of the 4C concept takes shape as a body of work produced by 24 nascent artists from around the world. Through their interpretations of "how urban culture inspires creativity" we are taken on a "Sightseeing Tour".
CULT-GEIST™ is a global network of creatives - filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians, designers, promoters, journalists, club owners, and people who make things happen. We commission projects around the world as cultural research and we work with artists and brands on collaborative creative projects..
www.cultgeist.com
GUM in London is the global content division for Saatchi & Saatchi. GUM works with brands to create culturally viable marketing and communication properties.
www.gumfac.com
Marisa Brickman
marisa@cultgeist.com
If you would like to get in touch with any of
the artists, please
direct all inquires to:
Laurelene Chambovet
lolo@cultgeist.com
The Gum Factory
The Courtyard,
1-3 North Court
80 Charlotte Street
London UK
WIA 1AQ
+44 (0)20 7462 7500
Andrew Wilkie, Managing Director
andrew@gumfac.com
Samuel Gassmann
samuelgassmann@hotmail.com
Adam Neate
Alexandre Reynaert
(White Russian Agency)
Brendan Dugan (An Art Service)
Carine Soyer
Gavin Lucas (Creative Review)
Naz Foroodian (Stink TV)
Acyde (Nike)
Adam Kirby (S&S)
Adam Kleinman
Adel Stalmajer
(Hungarian Cultural Centre)
Agnes Cazin
Alex Wipperfurth (Plan B)
Andrew Wilkie (GUM)
Ange Leccia (Pavillon/ Palais de Tokyo)
Anik Labreigne
Anneloes van Gaalen
Barnaby Bretton (Neverhappened)
Ben Pruess (Adidas)
Boris Hopppeck
Christine Socchard
Crystina Cinti (GUM)
Danae Konstantinou
Devin Flynn
Dominic Goodman (Hallso)
Eric Laine
Gaia Nova
Gary Breslin (Panoptic)
Girlcore
Gordon Hull (Surface to Air)
Isaac Ramos
Jo Field (S&S)
Jon Santos
Jörg Heikhaus (Heliumcowboy Gallery)
Julien Cahn (Nike)
Kathy Grayson (Deitch Gallery)
Kati Holloway
Laura Preti (Metro Imaging)
Lee Daley
Les Seddon - Brown
Lexy Stingl (GUM)
Ludovic Prevoteaux
Marc Silver
Mari Aarre
Marc Schiller (Wooster Collective)
Michael Anthony Barnes-Wynters (Contact Theatre)
Michael Connor
Michael Nevin
Michel Dierickx
Mike Middleton (Team Saatchi)
Miriam and Sylvain Thieblemont
Mohsen Bayramnejad
Monica Hudson (S&S NYC)
Nacho Alegre
Nomad
Pascal Monfort (Yummy Magazine)
Paul Jones (Ibiblio)
Philippe Jarriseon
Rupert Leigh
Russell Davies
Ryan McGinness
Sahar Shaker (S&S)
Sally Gregory (GUM)
Sarah Thompson
Sayaka Takahashi
Seth Godin
Stephan Doitschinoff
Steve Lazarides (Laz, Inc)
Ted Polhemus
Thomas Frank
Tilt Design
Valeriane (Taxie Gallery)
*All artists who submitted work
*Anyone we forgot
BORN
05.05.1979, Saitama, Japan
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
05.05.1979
The day when my mother ate
banana after she gives birth to me.
01.06.1996
The day when it began to associate
with lover.
05.1997
The day when book was read,
- Briefe An Einen Jungen Dichter by
Rainer Maria Rilke.
It will come in the future.
A PHRASE
Thank you & love mother, father,
Arata, Sayaka and all friends.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Little and big stories of an individual
amidst the chaos of the urban jungle.
The illustrations of Ayaco Nakamura
present a fragile and subtle
universe – full of wonders.
BORN
21.03.1983, Teheran, Persia
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
First drinking experience
when I was 13 years old.
2001
Once I met my first love.
2003
Military service.
2005
My last exhibition.
A PHRASE
"Beautiful but dumb."
"Oasis in moment. If you are coming to me. I am beyond oblivion.Beyond oblivion is a place where dandelions run into the veins of air. Bringing news of a faraway blooing bush. The sands bear footprints of delicate horseman. Mounting the hilltop of poppies. Beyond oblivion, the umbrella of desire open. As soon as thirst blows on to the root of a leaf. Rain sings songs of freshness. One is lonely here. Where an elm`s shadow streams into eternity.
If you are coming to me. Approach gently, softly lest your crack. The fragile china of my solitude."
Sohrab Sepehry
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Women on a side, men on the other... a mysterious statue in the center. Ashkan Sadeghi takes his native city of Teheran to use as a template for his artistic project, dealing with the notions of religion, gender and community, far away from agressive and biased speeches.
BORN
Angelica Mesiti born 1976
Techa Noble born 1977
Emma Price born 1975
Katie Price born 1978
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
10.2004, New York
Catfish tacos at 2am on a Friday night, San Loco, Lower East Side. Guns'n'Roses playing through the speakers. We all ate more than one.
02.2005, Paris
Dancing at Le Baron post-performance at the Palais de Tokyo. Champagne and smiling velvet suits. Dancefloor love and vows to return.
09.2004, Tokyo
Walking "Bacon" the giant Irish Wolfhound through tiny streets and gardens. Night-dust and neons. A AU$10 coffee never tasted so good.
05.2006, Majors Creek
Staging Jackson Pollocks car-crash in a abandoned Porshe in the bush. Giant moths and failing generators in the freezing cold. Home to a lambroast, an open fire and bunks at the pub.
A PHRASE
DEATH BY STEREO,
Sam (Corey Haim) in the film Lost Boys (1987).
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
The Kingpins play with the codes of rock, punk and drag queen style, making a mockery of underground and contesting communities that are already mocking people's fears and comfort. A funny and sarcastic reaction to the individualistic model.
BORN
22.02.1980, Paris, France
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
11.05
European release of my first book "Carnet de Rue", publisher Freepresse.
31.01
Plum birthday
Exhibition on the walls outside of the European house of Photography, Paris.
10.05.05
Pasting on the top of the Palais du festival de Cannes, France.
A PHRASE
Be Independent and THINK BIG !
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
JR's playful black and white portraits of young people could have been the modern version of Doisneau portraits. But the suburban origin of these teenagers gives another dimension of youth in a trying environment, so misrepresented by the media. At the end, who are the bad boys?
BORN
06.03.1974, Budapest, Hungary
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
1984
My brother fights with my father.
1993
The first year in the Academy of Art.
1998
First visit in India.
1999
The first Rabbit sculpture.
A PHRASE
I have spirit, if I were a bear I wouldn't.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
In the impersonal environment of the city, where your shadow is likely to become your best friend, what's left when it disappears? Gergo Kovatch makes this frightening experience, close to a street art performance.
BORN
13.09.1977, New York, NY, USA
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
Many dates spent in the medical hospital.
Nearly thirty dates were lived at Second Mesa, Arizona.
There are so many dates upon which were felt the throes of being entirely mad - sometimes carrying on as a surrogate voice for the sun in the public.
Every date upon which I've been entirely bewildered by any affront to my perceptual capacity.
A PHRASE
What should be understood is that my works function like those maneuvers of a critical theory - in that this is opposed to totalizing power and acts as an "instrument for multiplication and multiplies itself. Deleuze, which defies common acceptance through simply complicating everything, though brilliantly.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Robert Schmaltz has a desperate goal: signing and dating balloons that he will leave to their own destiny in the urban landscape. Wind or kids will make the rest. By taking pictures of this vain action, he puts ahead the finality of any project: nobody cares if nobody sees.
BORN
1979, Berlin, Germany
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
1990
Starting to practise graffitti, carrying a virus.
1999
Meeting the white cube and the colorful theatre cube.
03.2006
Meeting and understanding the word equanimity.
03.2006
Starting to pracise aimlessness, carrying a grain.
A PHRASE
Living to be (t)here.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
The white paint covering the wheel of Idee's bicycle leaves traces of its destination: from a circle to a straight line, from a turn to a stop, they always draw a new pattern. No routine, no system, no strategy of appearance. Efforts to become visible and followed remain as big a mystery.
BORN
14.12.1971, Sao Paulo, Brazil
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
The day I was born.
The day I nearly died.
My first individual exhibit at an art gallery.
The day I beat my distance record in the underground sewers in SP.
My first exhibit in a major art gallery.
My first trip to London.
A PHRASE
Those who believe will always reach their goal.
"They say it is absurd to have feelings, to love, to have dreams and hope. They fear the absurd of fighting for a better world, to be happy, free and creative. They fear the absurd of being laughed at, of being alternative. They fear the absurd. We ARE the absurd!!!"
Calazans
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Zezao goes deep into the city of Sao Paulo, preferring to show his wall paintings far away from the creative and cultural places-to-be. In this way, he returns to street art's primitive origins, choosing the sewers over the gallery.
BORN
27.08.1980, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
25.12.1992
After much convincing, my parents bought me my first skateboard. Skateboarding immediately put me into a circle of creative people. The culture that skaters surrounded themselves with gave me a foundation for creative thinking. It was the first time I was really engaging with the city. Benches for sitting became rectangular chunks of marble for board sliding; a slight slant on a wall became a ramp for wall riding. It was a powerful way to look at familiar objects. Skateboarding gave me the power to see the city as an accumulation of materials rather than objects with one specific function.
06.09.1995
I was attending high school, it was my second of four years and I hated it with a passion. But this day I was starting art class. My art teachers name was Mrs Nicholson. The first thing I did was write an "F" in front of her title on the door, so it read Mrs Nicholson FArt Teacher. I worked hard and she recognized that I had talent immediately. She gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted.
She let me make my own curriculum. She also secretly allowed me to order all the materials I needed on the schools money. This gave me the freedom to develop and experiment at an early age.
26.07.1998
This is the day I moved to New York City to attend Pratt Institute. I was 17 and ready for anything. I was used to moving due to the fact that my father was a military pilot and we had been stationed in 10 different locations across the USA. But, this was the first time I had moved on my own. New York was unlike anywhere I had ever seen. It felt like I had landed on a different planet. The city radiated a powerful energy. You could feel the soul of the collective community dripping out the architecture. I became obsessed; I had to be a part of the dialogue. Right away I knew this was the place for me.
11.09.2001
The day the planes hit, I was in Brooklyn about a mile from the plane crashes. My friend Quenell Jones and I walked around and watched the whole spectacle in a strange stupor. It was the most unreal day of my life. It still doesn't feel like it happened.
Quenell and I sat on the bank of Brooklyn, directly across from the towers. We watched the smoke fold out of the massive newly formed hole in Manhattan. All the paper work from the World Trade Center was just blowing across the river over our heads. I remember seeing Pakistani shop owners getting attacked and having to close down almost immediately. I couldn't believe how quickly people were in rage. I was really sad and angry, and the more information I found out about what had happened, the more I was confused.
A PHRASE
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
Carl Sagan
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Street lamps, windows, doors. The characters of Brad Downey's work are street furniture. Under his will, the entire urban environment acts differently, imitating people more than helping them to behave normally.
BORN
Eunji Kim
28.05.1976, Seoul, Korea
Jay Rechsteiner
24.10.1971,Basel, Switzerland
4 DATES IN MY LIFE (EUNJI)
28.05.1976
First day I kissed with my family, my life and this world.
26.09.1999
First day I breathed London and walked the first step of the new path in my life.
21.10.2004
The day my film screened in beautiful Sicily and encountered love of my life, beautiful sea and people.
EVERYDAY
I greet everyday with love and endless "hellos and goodbyes"
A PHRASE
When you say something true it is beautiful, and when you say something beautiful it becomes the truth.
4 DATES IN MY LIFE (JAY)
11.1999
First work published: in Charlie's Art Market, Fukuoka, Japan Date I met the love of my life. When I was born.
01.1996
Date I left my home town.
05.2004
Coming to the UK.
A PHRASE
"He is an artist not afraid of speaking his mind and explaining his beliefs. There is a severe lack of no bullsh*t these days but thankfully, not with Rechsteiner."
Soma Soma Magazine
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Zeitraum's video could be the perfect nightmare of an architect. Showing a site endlessly under construction, it signals the end of the city as a stable and remarkable environment, where buildings are the most vulnerable elements.
BORN
29.08.1981, Zagreb, Croatia
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
Yesterday.
Today.
Tomorrow.
Day after tomorrow.
A PHRASE
I don't live my life through phrases, but through my senses.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
What's the point of road signs, if not optimizing and controlling moves and traffic? Nina Kurtela goes another direction with her boards, leading people into her fantasy world.
BORN
09.06.2004, Judd St, London, UK
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
21.09.1945
The birth of Jerry Bruckheimer, producer.
1960's
The germination of what developed into the Internet and World Wide Web.
26.10.1985
The call made by Don Denkinger in the World Series game causing St.Louis Cardinals to lose to Kansas City Royals. Thousands of World Series Champ T's go to waste.
1987
CompuServe introduced the .gif format.
A PHRASE
"That's what you get for trying to be like me."
Marquis, St. Louis USA 1994.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
The use of various media at stake in Paul B. Davis and Emma Davidson's work, producing a mix of sounds, image, or simply texts, gives a singular view of the city: the perfect place to compile and twist cultures.
BORN
05.01.1980, Japan
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
17.10.2005
My first work [Tokyo soap opera] published.
15.11.1996
First kiss in my life.
20.04.2006
Began to associate with girlfriend (now).
15.03.1953
My mothers birthday.
A PHRASE
Bluff And Effort
by Noriko Makino 1953
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
A Japanese woman putting her foot on an unstable table, a man holding a knife proudly. Is this feng shui? With a series of theatrical images, Tomoaki Makino gives his personal vision of the Japanese urban life: compact and a bit crazy.
BORN
08.10.1979, Sydney, Australia
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
The day I discovered audio visual synthesis.
The day I exhibited my first animation as a video installation.
The day I saw a wispy alien floating outside a window.
Today.
A PHRASE
"The human face is an empty power, a field of death... after countless thousands of years that the human face has spoken and breathed one still has the impression that it hasn't even begun to say what it is and what it knows."
Antonin Artaud, from a text to introduce an exhibition of his portraits and drawings, Galerie Pierre, July 1947.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Harriet Birks' cartoons, filled with a woman duplicating herself in a consumerist environment inhabited by butterflies, dollars and dragons, set the tone of a pop commitment.
BORN
01.05.1980, San Jose, Costa Rica
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
The day I bought my first music album.
The day I decided on leaving the school of architecture.
The day Pixel Nouveau launched on the internet.
The day I reached Barcelona, after all the planning it took.
A PHRASE
"It is the spectators who make the pictures."
Marcel Duchamp
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Monsters directly inspired from the period of Renaissance share the same space as a woman on the phone. How to live all together in the city? The images of Pixel Nouveau question the notion of a melting pot.
BORN
26.05.1977, Norway
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
My birthday is May 26.
I think it is important every year. Not because it is so much different from any other day, because physically it is not, but still... You look back, you look forward, you count up and down, and for a moment you become conscious about your life: You have about eighty years. They are running fast, but things have also been happening. And they still do. This strange thing that is called life. Then, suddenly it is over. What can you look back at? Were you happy?
First of April 2003 was the day I made the application deadline for the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. I remember having planned to send a lot of applications to different places, not many of them being about art at all, but thinking that what I would choose if I got to pick, was this. I only got to send one application and that was it. I got in, and that is basically how i started making something I would later refer to as art.
I have a very strong feeling about the time I was around 26. This is when I really, and for the first time since I was little, started to lock forward to becoming older. It emerged through a mental process having one strong belief: That I would grow wiser in life, if I had the honesty to do instead of think. I will not proclaim to have done so, but soon hitting thirty I still try. Moral: Old people have the opportunity to know more than young people.
When I was 13. I got a big black dog. He was later to become a very important reason to why I ended up in the art industry. It is a long story, maybe I can tell it to you one day...
A PHRASE
A friend and fellow student once said to me, that what he was associating more than anything else to my work was moving a lot of stuff around. Always driving a car and always having new ideas, about something, that could fit into a gallery.
It was during the making of the Final Year Show at the Art Academy in Oslo, and I, was moving my mothers office into the gallery. She is working as director, for a public fund that gives scholarships to artist, and was going to work there for six weeks.
The Orange Camper was not about bringing something into a gallery, but I think it was the beginning of the whole "driving things around" issue...
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Hans E. Thorsen escapes from the confined structure of the city on a road trip. Everywhere he goes, he is at home, reinventing a way to occupy new territories.
BORN
09.03.1967, Accra, Ghana
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
02.07.1989
17.05.1992
10.01.1996
27.10.2002
A PHRASE
New money.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
The location of Kwayie Kuffour's images is key: his photos of so-called European houses in an African context point out the sickness for an Occidental dream. An architectural anomaly denouncing much more than the craziness of rich owners, but the confusion of a whole continent.
BORN
01.09.1978, Novi Sad, Serbia
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
My birth.
My first bicycle.
First solo show.
Some ordinary day.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
What kind of urban reality is reliable? The glass installation of Petar Mirkovi helps anybody looking through its window system to see a framed landscape. Does organisation begin with frame? Maybe.
BORN
21.12.1980, the Netherlands
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
21.12.1980
Sunday, full moon.
04.03.2001
My first long trip outside Europe begins... Mexico.
07.02.2003
The day I met the love of my life.
21.08.2003
San Pedro trip Cuszo, full moon.
A PHRASE
I've started taking pictures to reflect my experience with life, to get some grip in this period of change. I was part of an anonymous subculture, outcasts of society. "We will survive this urban jungle, but will we survive ourselfs?
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Apache's photos focus on one of the elements of the city not always in plain view: a temporary residence is brought to life and then eventually destroyed. It's life is documented, like an endangered species with the city as a predator.
BORN
30.10.1975, Teheran, Iran
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
December 31st is on my top list.
June 8th is OK.
April 29th also.
I can say that May 6th is important too...
A PHRASE
"What you see is what you see is what you see, what you get is what you get
is what you get."
Gertrude Stella
AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
Since the early eighties, American cars have evolved a lot. Under the pressure of the Japanese car industry, which quickly understood the necessity of producing more economical cars, American brands have slowly stopped producing those huge vehicles with an aggressive design that would burn a lot of cheap fuel imported from the Middle East. Thus, curves became popular in order to ease aerodynamics; increasing the driver's security provoked changes in terms of the front deck, details got standardized.
Thus, the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties saw the apparition of those globalised cars and the American streets slowly lost the singularity conveyed by those vehicles parked along them. Now, from one side of the Western world to the other, the automobiles all look alike. For sure, these last years, four-wheel drive cars have launched the fashion of powerful vehicles again and American pick-ups are enormous, as they should be. But their mythologies are no longer based on the road, but on a confrontation with Nature. Descending from fourwheel drive vehicles, their place is not meant to be the two lane blacktop, even if we encounter them in the cities, where they vary from the countryside pick to the Hummer limo. Concerning all the other kinds of modest sized cars, they are now conceived as a reduction of the road to a mere journey from one place to another. Only the vans remain, with a design that has surprisingly evolved very little since the sixties. Vincent Gallo noticed it and, in his movie "The Brown Bunny", he crosses the USA from coast to coast not in a car but in a beautiful black van.
By traveling along the American roads, searching for those cars upon which the road movie built its legend, Aurélien Mole was looking for
fragments of the visual identity of the American landscape. Applying to this subject the ability of photography to inventory in series motifs of the real, he photographs these cars, in the way of the Düsseldorf School from which the Bechers are the most dogmatic example. All the vehicles are photographed from the same lateral point of view, so that the body lines of the car are parallel to the edge of the frame. Using the vehicle's own proportions, half of the height of the automobile, from the tires to the roof, is then transposed onto the sides of the picture so that the car is at the exact center. Without isolating the vehicle from its background, Aurélien Mole works on the capacity of those automobiles to define the context that surrounds them.
However, the specific framing used by Aurélien Mole for these images transposes them out of the documentary field. Indeed, each image is mounted on Diassec with an aluminum frame, which is painted on the back and on the sides in the same color as the car represented on the front. Becoming an object rather than an image, this work recalls some of the Minimalist sculptures by Don Judd: but, in opposition to the clean painted surfaces, the photograph evokes
a certain melancholic feeling. Close to vanitas paintings, these pictures of cars rusting on the roadside are ambivalent products of civilization. Both beautiful design objects and ecological catastrophy, the American car allegorizes more than ever, the ambiguities of a country as big as a continent.
Anatole Gibergues
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
Old cars get a new status through Aurelien Mole's images. They are changed into icons, photographed as portraits. Their common use vanishes in exchange for the beauty of their shape, their colour and the recollection of their movements.
BORN
08.05.1970, Paris, France
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
July 21st 1969 at 3:56 am, Paris time, the man walks for the first time on another body (frome the sky), the moon... 9 months and a few days later I pressed the ground for the first time.
August 1st 1997, I discover another continent. The first chock were the heat and the heavy and loaded smell, then at the same time, like in a movie, the police siren, a very long limousine, a yellow taxi and far away a panel, 'Welcome to New York'
January 4th 2004 early afternoon: My name has never travelled that far. Engraved onto a DVD, fixed on a plaque, part of me looks a red and dusty sky. Spirit has just landed on Mars. (Certificate No 1611512)
The last date is still to come as the German saying goes: Wo ein Wille ist, ist auch ein Weg, where there is will, there is a way.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
The work of Vincent Royer is made of video samples, lasting only a few seconds. It is a repetitive program about neutral scenes, becoming rapidly hypnotizing. By showing a loop of real and mundane moments, these videos become what they condemn: mechanical moves.
BORN
1973, Vancouver, BC, Canada
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
09.1990
When I first came to Italy with my dad.
06.1994
When I travelled to Europe on my own and fell in love in Venice and ended up staying in Europe.
05.2001
When I met the Artist Francesco Clemente.
08.2005
When my grandma died.
01.2006
And If you want another, when I got my Ipod.
A PHRASE
When he speaks of something that he has read it is as if he heard it from a voice.
Making the visible more visible in a subtle way.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
At the origin of Mathew McWilliams' pictures are Indian relics and art from the Renaissance, far away from Vancouver, that he takes as a material to develop a really precious and delicate work. The city as a trace, almost evanescent, filled with darkness, where bright and colourful details remain as the only proof of life, light... and art.
BORN
06.05.1980, Frimley, Surrey, England
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
05.1992
Won my first art competition.
09.2000
Had my first tattoo.
07.2002
My heart was broken for the first time.
01.2004
Had my first book published
A PHRASE
Joseph Beuys said "everyone is an artist" and Martin Kippenberger said "every artist is a human being". They were both right.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
James Ford reroutes the car of the infamous TV series the 'Dukes of Hazard' to become a British car park. By gluing miniature cars on a real one, toys inspired from a hit of the mainstream, the most common object of daily life pretends to enter the legend. Reality turns to be a fiction, where everything is possible.
BORN
06.05.1976, Erfstadt, Germany
4 DATES IN MY LIFE
10.03.2006
I moved to New York City.
25.03.2006
I was shopping for DVDs online and I saw an ad posted by a private citizen for an unopened pack of 25 blanck DVDs. The price was 10 dollars and I thought that was a real bargain. I replied to the email address which was on the ad saying "Hi! I am in Brooklyn and I am interested in your DVDs. Do you still have them?" I received a reply saying that the DVDs were still available and that I could come to a Starbucks coffee shop on the upper east side between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm tomorrow if I was still interested. I went to the Starbucks and discovered that it was a pack of not 25 but 30 DVDs.
28.03.2006
A man approached me while I was shopping for toothpaste at the local pharmacy. He asked me what time it was and I told him it was almost 4:25 pm. He noticed that I was buying a tube of Aquafresh Special Antiplaque. He told me that it was not a good toothpaste for the money and that Crest Tartar Control was a much better value. I studied the Aquafresh tube trying to find the price and the number of fluid ounces. I looked at the man for a second and then walked over to the check out counter.
05.04.2006
I went to Kroger's grocery store to purchase some Hershey's Kisses. Unfortunately they didn't have any so I chose M&Ms instead. I paid for them with a $5 bill but the cashier gave me change as though I had given her a $20 bill. I debated whether or not to tell the cashier of her error.
A PHRASE
"Hmmmmmmm... uh... hmm..."
Jesus Christ
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
A polished flag, desperate housewives, a gentle neighbourhood, a well-used barbecue.: images that are haunting the work of Sanford Winterberger, half German half American. His vision of American values through the con- finement of suburban life, are each time at stake, between anguish and fascination.
