Terrasse

Artists Inhabiting the Urban Post-Apocalyse

at least for me, this is the most prevalent theme I encounter in my various Parisian gallery visits this fall.  Of course, I choose which exhibitions I visit and those I seem to choose invariably have some sort of darkly fantastic edge.  Even though in style the artists to which I refer vary greatly, for me they share an undercurrent of the post-human, post-apocalypse.  Here are reviews I wrote of my three favorite shows I’ve seen this fall:

NICOLAS DARROT
Galerie Eva Hober
Until 20 December

Nicolas Darrot’s curious sculptures invade the gallery like artifacts from a post-human world ruled by mechanically-inclined, insectile cyborgs.  In a departure from his more well-known functioning robotic works, Darrot allows his imagination to probe new territories, moving beyond the constraints of electronic functionality.  With these new works (ten years in the making) insects are frozen in action, caught in the throws of their malicious, militaristic operations.  They move huge syringes, hold each other in bondage, and are reconfigured into hybrid beings.  This exhibition sits somewhere between natural history, fantastic sci-fi imaginings, and human self-reflexivity.  Somehow, in the course of creating these monstrous war-machines in miniature, Darrot manages to capture and convey something very human and very relevant.

BHARTI KHER, ‘Sing to them that will listen’
Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin
Until 10 January

London-born, Delhi-based artist Bharti Kher creates with her darkly mythical sculptures and graphic works a world both playful and macabre.  Exhibited widely throughout Europe and the United States, this artist brings together seemingly dissonant bodies of works:  abstractly graphic panels that vaguely recall natural forms and blatantly narrative sculptural pieces.  But in uniting these works with a single show Kher speaks of a mystical world of geometric precision and human vulnerability.  The title of this show implies that the artist is revealing to the viewer a magic that only those who are willing can see.  From a reclining skeleton to destinies written on grains of rice, Kher’s works ask the viewer to engage their own imaginations, to build stories around these works that eventually compose a cosmology in their own right.

MARK HANDFORTH
Galerie Almine Rech
Until 20 Dec.

Mark Handforth’s playful sculptural works describe an urban dystopia lush with the glittering remnants of industrial culture.  A melting fire hydrant, a twisted parking meter, a disassembled taxi: Handforth creates for the viewer a world of urban decay that is in denial of itself.  Instead of the more typical rusted and grime-encrusted vision with which other artists treat this subject matter, Handforth’s sculptures live in a state of beautiful decomposition yet are not grotesque by any means.  Wandering through this world in which industrial materials are used to delineate iconographic forms (a sheet metal heart, a star composed of I-beams) and easily recognizable urban artifacts are re-visioned one is lost in Handforth’s rendering of an apocalyptic future of purely aesthetic purpose.

Surprisingly, these exhibitions have seduced me: where once I felt that I didn’t understand sculpture, felt it maybe irrelevant or inaccessible, I now understand its incredible story-telling capacity.  While I feel all art - indeed visual culture in general - has the potential to transport one, to place the viewer in the work’s reality, to displace the viewer from her own reality and so on, I now feel that sculpture is particularly saturated with this capability.  I view sculpture now as a kind of set design, inviting the viewer to imagine herself as a player in the artist’s world.

Papa in Paris

Last month my father stopped by Paris for a visit en route to Krakow. It had been 50 years since he last stepped foot on a sidewalk in this fair city, and he was aghast at both how much things had changed (the metro ended at gare du nord in the ’50s) and how much had not. I wasn’t quite sure what sites would prove most interesting for him, but we managed to hit (what i consider to be) the big ones: cafe flore in st. germain, windmills and cafes in montmartre, gardens in versailles, picnics, lunches, dinners at home, best baguettes, stinkiest cheeses, cheapest wine, dream-inducing calvados . . .

I think he enjoyed himself. I enjoyed taking pictures of him here . . . Anyway, I loved having him here and loved seeing the city with him. and here are the pictures to prove it.

Dinner Party at Butte aux Cailles

Saturday night my friends from the Territory - Lili, Rebecca, and Andras - graciously hosted us at their flat in Butte aux Cailles for a lovely dinner prepared by their chef friend, Daniel. Butte aux Cailles is a beautiful little neighborhood in the 13th arrondissement that has shorter-than-usual buildings (read quaint for Paris) whose ground floors are largely inhabited by homey cafes and rowdy bars. After talking me into downing my first fresh oyster (really just tasted of sea water), our hosts plied us with calamari, artichokes, garlicky mussels, herb-encrusted cheeses, and a delicious baked pasta. Satiated to the point of intoxication, we began to collectively dramatize the Jabberwocky in English, French, and Hungarian respectively. Ridiculous, yes, but unmistakably fun.

By the time Dustin and I were ready to leave it was nearing 2am and we ran to try to make the last train home to Boulogne-Billancourt. We did make the first part of our connection, but were left stranded when the second did not appear. So, there we were at Gare Austerlitz, in the middle of the night, the wind blowing fiercely (but not meanly), and a slight drizzle collecting on our coats.  Unwilling to brave the night buses, we decided to walk until we could find a cab. Unfortunately (or not) all cabs were either occupied or off duty, so we settled ourselves into what promised to be a long walk. But we found that Paris is quietly adn intimately beautiful at night, late at night when it’s calm and most people are warm inside. With the wind blowing our hair into Doc Brown fros and the streets shiney with moisture life felt so fresh and open and full and the city seemed to exist only to fill dustin and i up with its old old whispering secrets.

We took indirect routes, stopping down on the banks of the Seine for a brief photoshoot and a smooch. We viewed from afar tall windows flashing with purple lights and imagined aloud what sort of parties were taking place behind them. We discussed what we love about this city and our life here and the night and finally we found ourselves near the Eiffel tower and happily flagged a taxi (a very serendipitous encounter). By the time we got home (only 5 minutes later) it was near 4 am and the city was finally asleep (or at least dozing off) in the biting air of pre-dawn.

Autumn like a Caillebotte painting

I’d been promising to make a visit to the Georges Rouault exhibition up at the Pinacotheque until mid-January and yesterday I finally made the time. Rouault was a Fauvist/expressionist painter that I became fascinated by my first term at grad school, and I was determined that his work could be read beyond the standard “he was so moralizing and religious and look you can see that here” approach. Thankfully, this exhibition does it (or begins to), looking at his connections to other artists, writers, and thinkers. More interestingly, perhaps, this exhibition also examines who has collected his works and why - particularly questioning the paintings’ appeal to the Japanese collector who loaned out the works featured in the show.

Besides supplying me with my shot of art-induced calm, introspection, peace, contentment (why viewing artworks makes me so freaking happy will perhaps be the subject of another post) - my visit to the pinacotheque took me to the opera quarter, a region of paris that i seldom visit. Emerging from the sticky-hot, labyrinthine metro (i took three different tunnels before i found the exit) I was immediately reminded of a Caillebot painting - Parisiens walking hurriedly along rain-slick streets - and, aside from the rushing traffic and designer clothing shops, could easily imagine myself in 19th century paris.

Then, there are the christmas displays . . . Paris is dressing itself for the holidays. Lovely, sure, but a bit premature if you ask me. And since we, of course, will not be celebrating the holiday here it feels as if it is something happening wholly outside of us. Though I must admit, I had my first taste of a roasted chesnut (marron, in french) a few weeks ago, courtesy of our friend Paolo.

the day after - a new day

signs of Obama’s victory in my daily Paris life:

champagne toast at the territory

a young woman chanting “O-Ba-Ma” on the metro

Obama awareness pamphlets being handed out at the metro station

Sergio inaugurating a new project

Chills up and down my arms after listening to npr coverage this morning.

The realization that suddenly, i’m not ashamed to be american

Election Day in Paris

With the nature of the news media today, it has been relatively easy for me to keep up with the campaign news. Despite my constant npr listening and youtube watching the rapid approach of election day still took me by surprise. I woke up yesterday to realize with a start that by wednesday morning, a new administration will have been decided upon for the American public. I’m not one of those enthusiastic politicos who watches the campaign as an exciting spectator sport. Rather, I’m a nail-biting, worrier who waits with both hope and dread for final results to be announced. And the waiting drives me nuts.

Even though we’re six-hours ahead of the east coast here in Paris, American ex-pats and French natives alike are all atwitter over the coming elections and there are several ways to spend the evening here in Paris waiting for the results to be decided. Most Territory participants are heading over to the 3rd arrondissement for a “night of cultural programming in order to explore and understand the United States . . . ” - there will be talks given and movies played and at 5am a little breakfast will be served. I think it would be interesting in particular to hear French talks and debate over the American electoral system, but unfortunately i’m not sure i have the stamina an all-nighter.

Other election-night offerings include all-night celebrations at “Breakfast in America,” a diner serving your standard greasy American fair (can’t wait to go soon - i’m missing my homefries!) and some sort of nightclub fete with a 10 euro entry.

Any of these options would be worth a trip, just for the experience alone and to report back to my peeps (you) my findings. Unfortunately for you, I’m not going anywhere. Instead, I’ll be making soba noodles for dinner and playing guitar hero with my man, flipping on npr intermittently. Of course, the election won’t be decided until after I’ve gotten up in the morning anyway . . .

“dirty domestic secrets” or “the fantastic dreams of unpaid laborers”

i have something i should admit to you. having majored enthusiastically in women and gender studies as an undergraduate it feels a bit like a sin or like a really dirty secret that i should only offer up in confession, my face obscured behind a latticework screen: i . . . am . . . a housewife. There, it’s said.

Granted my housewifery is enforced by the French government - i’m actually a government-mandated Parisian housewife - but nonetheless, it feels like i’m failing to inhabit young marya’s lofty visions of tough, independent, financially lucrative globe-trotting. It hit me today, really, how challenging it is for me to be *gasp* a housewife and how, despite my visions of magically transcending that ugly “visiteur” label on my carte de sejour, I will not be able to be employed in France for quite some time. I must resign myself to the status of unpaid laborer - domestic or otherwise.

After applying to and receiving a favorable response from a company looking for a freelance photo editor I set my sights on figuring out some way to slither through the administrative iron barring me from occupying said position. This was to no avail. Instead of finding the magic loophole, I was forced to accept my reality, really and truly. mini-freak out ensued. “What the hell did i just go through graduate school for?” I thought. “How can my man respect someone he has to support?” “Can I really find a way to be satisfied without bringing home the proverbial bacon (or lardons perhaps, since we are in France)?” My man anticipated this freak out and was very encouraging, saying I just need to be patient and wait for our status to change, hope to be sponsored by a company, etc. But still, I’m nearly thirty and anxious to embark on a career (not to mention anxious to move on from a grad school or a two-people-on-one-income budget. we are in paris, after all, and the repetto store is calling to me).

It’s not just the lack of monetary recognition for my talents and labors that bothers me, but it also seems that (at least in my mind) “housewife” is now a dirty word, that i’m not a realized woman or i’m a failed feminist if indeed i’m living supported on my husband’s income. Yes, there are extenuating circumstances, and yes I’m still busy and still trying to work on my career even if it doesn’t pay at the moment. And yes, if you’re asking for a great city in which to be a forced housewife this is the place. But still, there’s a part of me that feels like the world at large doesn’t value that for which it doesn’t pay. Like one could do the most spiritually or artistically or abstractly valuable work but if you don’t receive remuneration it somehow doesn’t mean anything . . . it’s a sad thought, yes, and probably cynical. But this is where i’m at, this is what i struggle with in the center of what i think must be the most beautiful city.

This is the frustration of relocation without corporate sponsorship. This is one of the frustrations of living in a country where you are not a citizen. This is the frustration of being an ambitious woman trapped in genie’s little housewife bottle, forced to ninja my way around very large, French roadblocks.