Clair-Obscur @ Bourse de Commerce

 

Peter Huyghe, Camata, 2024

Pierre Huyghe's video installation, Camata, 2024 fills the gallery beneath the Bourse cupola for the latest exhibition. Set in the Chilean Atacama desert, the film watches as three solar-powered mechanical arms move around a skeleton from the early twentieth century left lying on the desert floor. Cameras are placed on each arm, one moving on a semi-circular track around the skeleton, one outside the track simply observing, and one inside, probing, peering, and engaging with the skeleton and various glass balls, amulets, and a mirror. Of particular fascination is the film's editing which is done in real time by an AI algorithm. When Camata was shown in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, the algorithm was determined by human movement within the exhibition space, but it was unclear if this was also the case in Paris. In addition to being mesmerizing to watch as mechanical arms move around, in and out of close up, themselves fascinated by the skeleton, Camata creates sophisticated dialogues between technology and human, life and death, processes of surveillance and objectification. Similarly, given the age of the skeleton and its enigmatic story, human time is thrust into tension with technological time in the film. A discourse on celestial time also emerges as we watch day turn into night through changing light in the sky, the appearance of stars, and the waxing and waning of sun and moon. Added to these already complex times is the seeming unpredictability of the editing created by algorithms. In keeping with Huyghe's concern for the inexplicable, for the blurring of boundaries between machine and human, Camata sits somewhere between science fiction and a scary reality in which machines very quickly take on human qualities. 

Sigmar Polke, Axial Age, 2005-2007

Also challenging boundaries between human and celestial, as well as having interesting things to say about time, is Sigmar Polke's cycle Axial Age. The installation consists of nine panels made with varying techniques and media from Antiquity through contemporary, including acrylics and toxic, artificial pigments. The result are a series of transparent panels resembling discoloured stain glass windows, "graffitied" by time. The panels bring to mind sacred images, speaking to an era that has been desecrated, and simultaneously, rescued from the dustbins of history.

Philippe Parreno, La Quinta del Sordo, 2021

Philippe Parreno recreates Goya's black paintings in, La Quinta del Sordo, 2021, a film that underlines the darkness of Goya's paintings. As the camera moves into tight closeup, the viewer feels intimately connected to the melancholy faces and the frescoed works. Sound is key to Parreno's re-presentation, as the environment of the recreated space dominates the soundtrack. We hear mechanical sounds, crying, light gurgling water, moaning. Once again, the past (images) and the present (sounds) come together on these sensuous walls, seen lovingly through Pareno's camera. As the film progresses, the light changes, becomes progressively brighter until the camera and light together remove the images and reduce the paintings to surfaces. Then we see shadows of leaves from a tree outside a window falling on an abstract painting. Parreno's film was actually one of the only ones in the exhibition which is directly and obviously about light and darkness, as it quite literally brings the ghosts of the past out of the shadows, into the light of the present. 

Robert Gober, Untitled, 1991

Robert Gober, Untitled, 1990 

I was also thrilled to see a few pieces by Robert Gober in the first floor galleries as he is not an artist that we often see in Europe. Gober's unique installations of amputated limbs, in the case of those on display here, trapped in a suitcase, descending in a glass case are always emotionally moving, and simultaneously, somewhat scarey. A work in beeswax and human hair shows a pillow merged with a torso, one side a man, the other a woman. The disfiguratioin of both bodies and objects, the loss of boundaries between the two, making the piece surreal, and provocative. Gober's surreal objects show the sad, desperate deformation of humanity. 

Alina Szapocznikow, Fiancé folle blanche, 1971

There were lots of other works in the exhibition, many of which I could and would love to write about here if space permitted. But I will just mention the few pieces by Alina Szapocznikow, a Polish sculpture whose work was new to me. Szapocznikow made incredibly powerful depictions of women's entrapment and enchainment to male sexuality. A work such as Fiancé folle blanche, is reminiscent of a small statuette that could be placed on a wedding cake. For all its critique of heterosexual relations, the woman is as happy in her naked pose with a penis as her support, as the penis is happy with her embrace. There is no sense in which the woman is a victim to the male organ. But still, we can't help wondering if she had any choice.

Clair-Obscur is another sprawling exhibition loosely cohered around a theme that itself moves from clarity to obscurity across three floors and a range of media at the Bourse de Commerce. And like previous of the Pinault collection's themed exhibitions, Clair-Obscur contains some exceptionally strong works and others that pale, mainly due to their uncertain relevance to the exhibition. Similarly, because a number of the films are long, and reveal themselves over time, it is an exhibition that is difficult to appreciate in one visit. That said, the richness of some of the works make for a rewarding few hours.

Wright of Derby : From the Shadows @ National Gallery, London

Joseph Wright of Derby, Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump, 1768

The Wright of Derby exhibition at the National Gallery in London is small, glowing, and, on the day that I visited, all but empty. National Gallery visitors will be familiar with Joseph Wright of Derby's  Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (1768) as it is one of the many treasures on permanent display. The painting is arguably his most complex of those in the current exhibition as it encapsulates all of the themes and concerns that preoccupied him throughout his oeuvre. The lecturer performing a scientific experiment to an audience with differing levels of ambivalence, fascination, wonder, disgust, and trepidation takes up Wright's concerns of looking and the role of light as central to the spectacles of entertainment that were so in vogue in the second half of the eighteenth century. Film scholars have always been fascinated by this painting because it is cinematic in its bringing to life of a narrative about life and death through the use of artificial light. The boy in the background is also a key figure in his creation of a tension that runs through many of Write of Derby's paintings: the conflict between natural and artificial light put into play as he opens the curtain to reveal the moon.

Joseph Wright of Derby, Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight, 1765

Wright of Derby is also said to have been influenced by Caravaggio, but like Georges De La Tour, Wright of Derby using different kinds of light to meet very different ends from those explored by Caravaggio. For Caravaggio, light often had a mystical or religious significance, and for Wright of Derby, in his paintings, light was not only artificially produced, but even when the source is not visible, it is clear that it is realist. There is no transcendence or spiritual elevation in Wright's paintings. Similarly, for Wright, light is an experiment, measuring time, whether it is the transience of life or the structures given to us by the light of the natural world. Light creates small, intimate worlds, caverns in which scientists perform experiments, blacksmith's work, and children look on, sometimes fascinated, and at others, repelled by what they see.

Joseph Wright of Derby, An Academy by Lamplight, 1769

In keeping with his interest in education in his time, Wright often painted scenes from the academy, in which students and teachers appear to be learning technique. Like the Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump, the looks of the figures in other works are characteristically going in different directions, creating crossed sight lines, multiple centres of a painting, and suggesting movement where there is none. This type of scattering of sight lines is characteristically cinematic, used to create character, tension, and narrative. In Wright's paintings it also creates isolation, where each figure is alone, perhaps looking outward as well as inward, but always in their own world. Thus, again unlike Caravaggio, in Wright's paintings, we see multiple types of looking in a single image. It is not only about spectacle and modern regimes of looking thanks to entertainment, but there is also a more traditional introspection.

Joseph Wright of Derby, The Alchymist in Search of the Philosopher's Stone, 1795

In another tension set up by Wright in many of the paintings, very public moments of display are often made intimate and secret thanks to the light and figures needing to huddle around the experiment. Or not. In The Alchymist in Search of the Philosopher's Stone,1795, the boys in the workshop are not even looking at the alchemist's discovery of phosphorous while he is astounded at his discovery. The scene takes place in a dark, shadowy workshop, but it is we, not the boys who are invited into the protagonist's experiment. This opening out to the viewer is also a common occurrence of Wright's paintings, yet another sign of his interest in modes of looking, regimes of visuality and the rise of optical entertainments, such as the magic lantern, being developed in his midst. 

Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher giving that lecture on the Orrery
in which a Lamp is put in the place of the sun, 1766

The exhibition text claims that Wright of Derby was guided into his particular focus thanks to the fact that he wanted to do something different from what others in his midst were doing. On arrival in London, he had to stand out from the crowd, particularly because, as a young man from Derby, rather than a born and bred Londoner, the doors were not always open to him. As a man with his pulse on the dramatic upheavals in his world, Wright's insight into the role of painting in the middle of these changes, was visionary. He moved painting into the realm of performance and spectacle, at a time when it could so easily have been over shadowed or even left behind by other media. 

Kathleen Jacobs @ Karsten Greve

Kathleen Jacobs, Storm, 2023

I stumbled on this lovely group exhibition at Karsten Greve on my way home from the Martha Jungwirth exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac. Despite including pieces by very well known artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Pierre Soulages, and Cy Twombly, the discovery for me were the paintings of American artist Kathleen Jacobs. In fact, it was her abstract grey painting seen through the street window that templed me inside. 

Jacobs time consuming process of wrapping trees such that
canvases come alive through interaction with the weather 

Jacobs tends to use a single palette that nevertheless results in a myriad of colors and levels of transparency thanks to her lengthy process conceived to weather the paint. Jacobs begins by stretching  canvases and wrapping them around trees, and then, over months, sometimes years, applies layers of paint. In turn, when enough pigment stays on the canvas, she begins to rub it like paper over a woodblock. The imprint is then touched up in her studio, colors added, highlighting the shapes of bark, pulling out the contours of grain. For exhibition, the canvas is mounted and turned horizontally.

Kathleen Jacobs, Lumen, 2018

Even without knowing of Jacobs' painstaking and unique process, it's possible to see that her paintings are made over time. The paint is visibly diluted by weather and absorbed by the canvas until it is nothing but surface. Similarly, though it is not possible to pinpoint the precise process simply from looking, the final paintings resemble nature. We see in them skies, seas, clouds. That said, there is always something ambiguous, something we can't quite place because above all, they are, like all abstraction, inviting us to see something that might not be in the painting. Once they are explained, they hover between the natural landscape and a fascinating revision of woodcuts - by which she is influenced. Simultaneously, the paintings' contemporary relevance is unmistakeable as they are literally tree hugging works that make a gentle cry for the preservation of the forests without which the paintings would not be able to be made.

Kathleen Jacobs small works on exhibition
Galerie Karsten Greve

On the gallery's upper floor, a series of small works line the wall. They are delicate and peaceful, reflective and meditative. As often is the case with paintings of this size, small opens out to large expansive worlds. Similarly, it is in these small works on the upper floor that we see the texture of the canvas become more prominent than the paint to the point where color resembles the veins of granite or marble. To be sure however, it is not the size, but the process that ensures they are quietly revealing their substance.