Jennifer Allora (born in 1974 in Philadelphia, U.S.A. ) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born in 1971 in La Havana, Cuba), two Puerto Rico based artists, will have their first solo show at the gallery next month. Their works were recently shown in Europe in the exhibitions 'Common Wealth' at the Tate Modern, London (22 October – 28 December 2003) and 'Ailleurs, Ici' at the M.A.M. de la Ville de Paris, Couvent des Cordeliers ( 17 January – 29 February 2004).
The work of this artist duo – combining both an artistic and a scientific background - is an attempt to disrupt urban, political, economical, perception and communication systems. In so doing, they unravel and reformulate them in the exhibition space, often using technical devices, on a human and performative scale. This allows the spectator to question his own context at different levels with both judicious and humorous interaction.
The work “Land Mark”, exhibited at the Tate Modern, is exemplary of this approach. It is a felt carpet reproducing on a 1/1 scale a part of the Vieques bomb-testing range, used by US, NATO and other Allied Forces, and finally closed after 60 years of land reclamation movements on the island. “Puerto Rican Light” is also paradigmatic of their working process. A Dan Flavin neon work, bearing the same title, was borrowed by the institution for the purpose of being activated by solar panels whose energy came from Puerto Rican light. This work creates the critical and humorous encounter between art and the community, the gathering of a collection and its motivations.
For the exhibition at the Galerie Chantal Crousel, Allora & Calzadilla will produce four new works that will share a close relation to the coincidence between natural phenomena such as cyclones ( very common in the Caribbean) and political or economical events. The idea of revolution – a radical of political orientation – is repeated by the counterclockwise movement of the cyclone. The common thread of the works presented at the Chantal Crousel gallery will be a pertinent and witty scale enlargement / reduction of natural and human phenomena taken at the same level.
