Galerie Chantal Crousel is pleased to present Reena Spaulings’ third show at the gallery.
Suspended from the ceiling, a “sky” of black Dibond supports a composition determined by the alignment of the stars on the evening of the exhibition’s opening on September 3, 2016. Gazing up into the heavens from the city of Paris, Perseus (and Medusa), Hercules, Leo, Libra, Scorpius, Cygnus (swan), Aquila (eagle), Ursa Major, Ursa Minor and Draco (dragon) are some of the constellations one should see on this night. The sky is also a map and diagram etched into aluminum composite panels with nails and painted with Sennelier oils. While the main model for this installation is the astrological ceiling in the Sala del Mappamondo at the Villa Farnese in Caprarola, Italy (painted in the late sixteenth century by Giovanni Antonio Vanosino da Varese), the show also notes Heimo Zobernig’s lowered ceiling in the Austrian pavilion for the 2015 Venice Biennale (“Heimo Zodiac” was a possible title for the show) and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s paintings on industrial materials from the 1920s and 1930s. In the gallery’s side and back rooms are oil-on-Dibond works depicting the
French literary and media star Michel Houellebecq and several Pokémon Go characters (Weedle, Wigglytuff, Arbok, Gloom, etc.) recently sighted around the Marais. All of this painting was done on site.
Pont du Carrousel is an exhibition that locates itself and others in space and time through contemporary media such as painting. We could say that the astrological projection of figures and myths among the stars was an early instance of augmented reality. In the midst of dislocating ourselves and other objects via applications such as Pokémon Go (and Oil Painting), we allow Google and others to track and mine us non-stop, which feels more and more okay. Meanwhile there is no resting place for art, which continues to take on new layers and channels.
Pont du Carrousel
Der blinde Mann, der auf der Brücke steht,
grau wie ein Markstein namenloser Reiche,
er ist vielleicht das Ding, das immer gleiche,
um das von fern die Sternenstunde geht,
und der Gestirne stiller Mittelpunkt.
Denn alles um ihn irrt und rinnt und prunkt.
Er ist der unbewegliche Gerechte
in viele wirre Wege hingestellt;
der dunkle Eingang in die Unterwelt
bei einem oberflächlichen Geschlechte.
The blind man who stands on the bridge,
grey, as if a markstone of nameless realms,
perhaps he is the one thing that remains the same,
around which from afar the star-hour turns,
the heavenly body’s quiet center.
For all stumbles and struts and rushes around him.
He is the motionless one, the just one,
placed in a confusion of many ways;
The dark entrance to the underworld
among a race of superficial beings.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
