Andro Wekua. SUNSET - I LOVE THE HORIZON

Opening Saturday 24 May 2008

Pressetext:

Sunset is a monumental installation by Andro Wekua conceived specially for the La Rue space of Le Magasin. It is an assemblage of 170 ceramic tiles bearing a motif originally drawn by the artist, then enlarged 600 times and silkscreened onto the surface of the tiles. The image of a sunset as perfect colour stands as a façade borne and supported by a metal structure.

I Love the Horizon is a group show proposed by Andro Wekua with the help of Daniel Baumann. It features works by Rita Ackermann, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Luis Buñuel, Xavier de Maria y Campos, Trisha Donnelly, Jannis Jaschke, Mikheil Kalatozishvili, Martin Kippenberger, Emil Michael Klein, Oliver Laric, Nick Mauss, Sergej Paradjanov, Ewa Partum, Steven Parrino, Seth Price, Richard Prince, Yves Saint-Laurent, Piotr Uklanski and texts by Anna Moschovakis, Anne Sexton, Marina Tsvetaeva, Derek Walcott and Adam Zagajewski.

Sunset and horizon evoke common ideas of eternity, introversion and beauty, but also individual experience, something people have seen on numerous occasions. Like art, they are a theatre and a stage onto which we, the public, project our nostalgia, our ideas and our enthusiasms, which they absorb like black holes. They make us irrational, lose our capacity to reason. Art opens up new horizons and leads us (like wit) to spaces of melancholy, knowledge and emancipation. I Love the Horizon is dedicated to them.

In 1972, Polish artist Ewa Partum wrote the words “New Horizon is a Wave” in sand on a sheet of paper. In her Poems by Ewa films (1972), we see her throwing paper letters into the sea and into a ravine so as to dissolve (man’s) language. The exhibition I Love the Horizon ends in the mountains and in real life, beyond the sunset and horizon, with two documentaries on the harshness of an isolated existence in the mountains of Spain (the 1932 Las Hurdes by Luis Buñuel and of Georgia (Salt for Svanetia, made in 1929 by the Georgian director Mikheil Kalatozishvili).

After this comes a space that gathers together images by Rita Ackermann, Xavier de Maria y Campos, Jannis Jaschke, Martin Kippenberger, Emil Michael Klein, Nick Mauss, Sergej Paradjanov, Richard Prince and Yves Saint-Laurent. It is dedicated to time: here Martin Kippenberger completes portraits of Jacqueline Picasso, Rita Ackermann places masks on time, Xavier Maria y Campos has it lie down, taking his wife as the model for photographs over many years, Yves Saint-Laurent and Sergej Paradjanov propitiate it with friendship, and Richard Prince multiplies it with re-photographed photos.

Before that, texts by Anna Moschovakis, Anne Sexton, Marina Tsvetaeva, Derek Walcott and Adam Zagajewski and a projection by Trisha Donnelly are presented in another room dedicated to poetry, which is conscious of its inadequacy in relation to the scale of the space

Finally, in the biggest room, abstraction makes an appearance, aiming to suggest a place of autonomy and emptiness, like a white room, with works by Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Steven Parrino, Seth Price and Piotr Uklanski.

The exhibition begins with 50 50 by Olivier Laric. These are films of 50 Cent fans singing his hit “In Da Club” that the artist found on youtube. Taking isolated sequences, Laric has put together a new hit, sung by the chorus of a global community, carrying visitors at the exhibition towards new mental horizons.

Andro Wekua
SUNSET – I LOVE THE HORIZON

mit Rita Ackermann, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Luis Buñuel, Xavier de Maria y Campos, Trisha Donnelly, Jannis Jaschke, Mikheil Kalatozishvili, Martin Kippenberger, Emil Michael Klein, Oliver Laric, Nick Mauss, Sergej Paradjanov, Ewa Partum, Steven Parrino, Seth Price, Richard Prince, Yves Saint-Laurent, Piotr Uklanski, Anna Moschovakis, Anne Sexton, Marina Tsvetaeva, Derek Walcott, Adam Zagajewski