This exhibition presents works revealing private and intimate situations, which because of an external intervention, topple over into the public, the dramatic.
Most of the artists invited to contribute to the exhibition have created a new piece of work in response to the theme.
ABSALON
Monsieur Leloup
1993
white wood window, neon lighting, 2 DVD
4 mins video on loop
180 x 180 x 120 cm
Behind a window two video screens are placed next to each other. Under the same lighting, Absalon shows us different scenes from Mr. Leloup’s private and public life simultaneously. The protective wall of the habitat is thus punctured.
Absalon brings together what is separated – he scatters in order to gather in a continuous and alternating movement.
This transitional work comes after the 6 Habitable Units. Absalon develops a succession of short scenes that are efficient and economic in the extreme. He moves on to the visualization of his external relationships, which he develops in his last work, Assassinats (1993).
Sophie CALLE
Cash Machine, Pamela Magnuson’s mugging on the 26th of August 1983 at 9 o’clock, 4 minutes and 20 seconds.
1991
4 black and white photos, framed
91 x 69 cm (x 4)
Sophie Calle developed the Cash Machine series in 1991 from photographs stored in a Minneapolis police station -from shots taken every 20 seconds by a security camera above a cash point connected to the station. Sophie Calle has extracted a collection of eloquent sequences that sensitively relate human emotions and behaviour, from hope to fear, disappointment, loss, violence and joy.
Alberto GARCIA-ALIX
Mi alma de cazador en juego
(My soul of hunter at stake)
2003
sound video, 9 mins
edition of 3
This piece is the first expression of a new process in Alberto Garcia-Alix’s work, using photographic images with video (Premio Fotoespana 2003).
Autobiographical, the first points of reference in ‘a voluntary exile’ in Paris are accompanied by a monologue in the first person.
An introspective journey whilst strolling in Barbès with only his ego for company.
Original sound track by Scratch Massive : Amanece (Dawn), composed, recorded and mixed by Sébastien Chenut.
Fabrice GYGI
A gentleman’s agreement
2002
DVD : edition of 30
Focusing particularly on street furniture intended to accommodate and direct the small groups or crowds
(anti-riot barriers, rows of seats, stages, courts, playgrounds), Fabrice Gygi questions the mechanism of the infrastructures set up by varied forms of authority in our democratic societies. By creating structures of the same kind – that can be dismantled, so transported - in places for contemporary art, he invites the spectator to play “both sides of the barrier”.
For the exhibition Through the Eye of a Needle, Fabrice Gigy presents a performance entitled A gentleman’s agreement, realised for the first time at the Vladin Dom biennale in 2002. With an almost everyday gesture, he pulls on a glove of metal on which is screwed a small house, he sets fire to it and peacefully watches it burn. The video of this performance will be shown for the length of the exhibition.
Mona HATOUM
Every Door a Wall
2003
Terylene fabric
400 x 150 cm
edition of 6
In response to the theme of the exhibition, Mona Hatoum presents a subtle curtain of transparent Terylene. Depending on the creases in the fabric, the printed picture reveals itself or vanishes from sight. It features the fragment of a page from The Herald Tribune news paper published in 2001, the photograph shows illegal immigrants in a lorry at the Mexican border.
Thomas HIRSCHHORN
Nail-sculpture (red)
2003
wood, metal, screws, nails, plastic, adhesive, printed matter, stickers
2,39 x 0,72 x 0,68 m
This sculpture inaugurates a new theme in the work of Thomas Hirschhorn. It has its origins in
Austrian/German social and cultural phenomenon, based on the patriotic quest for popular and financial support in wartime.
The “Stock im Eisen” (trunk in iron) is mentioned for the first time in 1533. It is a tree trunk encircled by a ring of iron, and covered by nails. From a mythical religious object to a sign of justice and truth, and even a trace of migration, it becomes a call for people’s solidarity with power during the first world war - under the features of a brave soldier. It returns sporadically in the sixties.
Hassan KHAN
Sometime/somewhere else
2001
sound and colour video
1 mins 45 secs
edition of 6
Extracts of an interview with 15 years old Hassan Khan about Egyptian youth from a Swedish television channel are put together with footage of him two years later – an amateur filmmaker and playing the electric guitar.
A series of sentences describing textually the nature of the work, and its relationship to an identity that is constantly re-framed, confront each other throughout the video. We are faced with a game that assesses memory, the document and cultural history – and reveals the interaction between oneself and the media of representation.
Moshe NINIO
Sleeping Figure (Preparatory Stage)
1978/2000
black and white photograph
105 x 105 cm
The first work of Moshe Ninio – a drawing taken from a publication and cut into four pieces, each of them photographed again and put back together. A generic work. A man sitting in an armchair, his head on a cushion on his knees, in position of protection – the advised position of emergency on aeroplanes. A sleeping man. Withdrawn. In the foetal position.
…An ordinary picture extracted, recycled, evaluated and re-evaluated; a weak picture, picture of a
“possible”, of a “maybe”, overtaken by time, the most disastrous – or on the contrary the least – is given over to the principle of indifference, maybe this is where the chance of safeguard lies…
(Freely from Alexandre Costanzo in “Moshe Ninio”, Edition Chantal Crousel, 2001)
Melik OHANIAN
Selected Recording # 069
Lambda print
200 x 124 cm
“The image in Melik Ohanian’s work is dedicated to the revelation of what escapes radically from words; from these human, natural, abstract realities of which intensity prevents any talk. But as the Selected Recording shows, a picture is always a migrating picture too and must be tackled with a theory of reference and quotation, with the particular problems of invention that this implies. Any stop on a picture is therefore either an event or the representation of an event, and at the same time the acknowledgement of a series of events of which it is the continuation and thus it ratifies..”
Extract from Vers le temps zero ou le cinema a rebours de Melik Ohanian by Jean-Christophe Royoux.
Gabriel OROZCO
3 drawings
Untitled
2003
blacklead on paper
28 x 21 cm (unframed)
The selection of drawings presented by Gabriel Orozco echoes the slip thread, without pre-fixed goals, but available to any direction suggested by the space on both sides of the line : inside, outside, loop, bow, skin, body, receptacle, orifice.
Anri SALA
31∞ - 131∞
2003
black and white photograph on baryta paper
110 x 160 cm (unframed)
edition of 5
A trampled underfoot, bare ground among exuberant and healthy vegetation. A circular space, a secret place of meeting and trade. The silent complicity of the surrounding nature. A presence turned into something almost tangible by its absence. A recognisable place in the collective memory as déja-vu, but unidentifiable. Photographed in any country of the world. A successful new approach of this both mental and physical area that Anri Sala attempts to reveal, between serenity and peace, memory and fiction.
Jose Maria SICILIA
Una tumba en el aire (1 to 8)
2003
graphite and blacklead on rice-paper
60 x 60 cm (framed)
From photographs taken in a mosque in Rumania, Jose Maria Sicilia uses graphite on paper to show the fragmented light beams of colour flowing through rose windows to the carpets on the floor where it reveals its brilliance. A transitional work about the quest for light that can be traced through all the work of Jose Maria Sicilia - and indicates the direction of his next
