Exo

Michael Debatty + Noah Barker @ Exo Exo + Lodos, Jun 23

21 June 2016

Paris’ EXO EXO and Mexico City’s Lodos Gallery have teamed up to present duo show by Michael Debatty and Noah Barker on June 23 in the former’s Paris site.

The press release discusses the exhibition in terms of what it describes as the ‘micro’, pragmatically framing the angle as one that aids coalition and alliance building between project spaces such as Exo in France and Lodos in Mexico:

“This is not to conclude the engagement as ineffectual in furthering the collective interests; rather it invites a time for sober second thoughts and doses of pragmatism.”

The short one-day gap that the exhibition can be referred to is also a coming together of a larger gap, quite intentionally it seems, left open, between “expectation and product” on the artists’ part, creating a space for “alternative vision”, as there is otherwise very little information to accompany the untitled show, and a plain grey jpeg poses as its leading image.

Debatty is Leige-based and Barker, New York-based, has presented in Mexico with the likes of Puppies Puppies and Aline Bouvy.

See the FB event for more details.**

  share news item

Peeping Tom’s Digest: the Paris issue launch @ Shanaynay, Jun 2

29 May 2016

The fourth issue of Peeping Tom’s Digest: Paris, is launching at project space Shanaynay on June 2.

The publication explores different art scenes around the world and is described as “experimental, empirical and subjective”. For every issue it takes a different city and houses text- and image-based contributions from both local and visiting participants. Previous editions have been on Berlin in 2009, Mexico City in 2011, and Beirut in 2013.

The Paris issue according to the press release “teases out an offbeat and distanced portrait of the Parisian and French scene, through the restitution of work groups (dinners, performances, round table) and contributions from 70 participants for whom a certain detachment was chosen or imposed: foreigners living in Paris or in residency, French people based abroad, nomads and dromomaniacs passing through, etc.”

Linked, and contributing to this particular scene and its write up are Eleanor Ivory Weber, Exo Exo founders Elisa Rigoulet and Antoine DonzeaudFenêtreproject, Gallerie Chantel Crousel, Mouhamed Bourouissa, Maxime Bichon who has worked with Paul Maheke, and curatorial duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi.

See the Peeping Tom website for details.**

Maxime Bichon. Courtesy the artist.
Maxime Bichon. Courtesy the artist.

 

 

  share news item

Пикник на обочине (Piknik na obochine) @ Exo, May 12 – 19

9 May 2016

The Пикник на обочине (Piknik na obochine) group show is on at Paris’ Exo, opening May 12 through May 19.

The exhibition —the title of which translates to ‘Roadside Picnic’ in English —includes work by the likes of Viktor Timofeev, Jason Benson, Martin Kohout, and Hannah Lees, each of whom have contributed a lot to the art world’s conversation on human self-comprehension and the related speculation around the existence of the ‘natural’ world during “The Time of The Anthropocene”, to quote philosopher Bruno Latour, who’s words are echoed in the press release.

The show borrows its title from 1970s Russian science fiction novel of the same name about an extraterrestrial occurrence called ‘The Visitation’, that happened for two days across six sites simultaneously, unbeknownst to the local people. The book compares the event to a picnic, while the exhibition’s press release also includes a paragraph from Annihilation (2014) by Jeff Vandermeer that describes a picture of the discovery of left-over rusted equipment and tents that were “little more than husks” in an aftermath of an expedition made by humans gone long before.

Other artists in Пикник на обочине (Piknik na obochine) are Eric Veit, Mia Goyette and frequent collaborators, Anne De Boer and Eloise Bonneviot, whose solo show of performances O Super (hu/wo-) man is currently on at London’s Green Ray, running May 16.

See the FB event for more details.**

  share news item

Fenêtre Project + Pakui Hardware @ Exo, Dec 10 – 18

10 December 2015

Fenêtre Project and Pakui Hardware are presenting a collaborative exhibition, Dawning, at Paris’s Exo, opening December 10 and running to December 18.

Following a text devoted to the neglected bacteria that “made us”, the press release for the show describes the human body as a map of a metropolis, where these micro-organisms become “citified, recycling all”, including these corpses of “once-living giant evolutionary offspring”.

The Paris-based Fenêtre Project is an artist and curatorial duo featuring Dustin Cauchi and Francesca Mangion, who recently presented we wanted to be better and ended up being happy group exhibition with the likes of Tilman Hornig, Pierre Clément and Felicia Atkinson. Pakui Hardware, meanwhile, is a collaboration between Lithuanian artists Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda who’s Lost Heritage was on at Riga’s kim? Contemporary Art Centre from January to February this year.

See the Exo website for details.**

Pakui Hardware, Lost Heritage (2015) @ kim?. Exhibition view. Courtesy the gallery and the artists.
Pakui Hardware, Lost Heritage (2015) @ kim?. Exhibition view. Courtesy the gallery and the artists.
  share news item

Aline Bouvy, Sorry I slept with your dog (2015) exhibition photos

20 November 2015

For two weeks in July, exhibition space Exo in Paris hosted Belgian artist Aline Bouvy‘s solo show, Sorry I slept with your dog. Little information was given with the announcement of the show apart from an image which stood in as the Facebook event cover photo of one of Bouvy’s drawings of a worried face next to a sculpture cast of a foot. The face looks worried by how close the foot is and also potentially how contorted and flexible the person out of sight’s leg is. Bouvy’s drawing manages to make the viewer know this. It looks at you.

Aline Bouvy, 'Inclusive Practice' (2015) Install view. Courtesy Exo Exo.
Aline Bouvy, ‘Inclusive Practice’ (2015) Install view. Courtesy Exo, Paris.

The phrase ‘Sorry I slept with your dog’ is to imagine a moment of self disgust. The moments in the the show are laid out via a similar format or thought/word-process of someone reflecting upon themselves. Sculpture feet are pigeon-toed hiding under black painted hay bails. The hay bails could even have only been in the space in order to host sad, sorry feet. There is a mini man drawn laid back or maybe knocked back on one of the thinner walls -which makes a nice contrast between his horizontal body drawn with perspective and the actual, thin vertical wall (aren’t all walls vertical?)

Aline Bouvy, 'Not much in my pockets' (2015) Install view. Courtesy Exo, Paris.
Aline Bouvy, ‘Not much in my pockets’ (2015). Install view. Courtesy Exo, Paris.

Underneath the charcoal man on the wall is everything he had in his pocket, according to a story that is so present inside all of the elements in this show and in Bouvy’s wider practice -without being verbalised. Of course the plaster casts of some buttons, a lighter, half a domino and some other bits that are lying on the floor are not from this guy’s pockets because he is a drawing, but Bouvy doesn’t even make you ask this ridiculous question. You just look at it and feel melancholic and you understand something.

Aline Bouvy, 'Sorry I slept with your dog' (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Exo, Paris.
Aline Bouvy, Sorry I slept with your dog (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy Exo, Paris.

Mounted on to the painted hay bails are some large printed images of a vaccum cleaner or water bottle with mountains of straws, or a squid, which, actually, upon describing in words seem to make sense in relation to the act and fact of suction. Bouvy’s work attaches itself on to you and maybe there is a really good reason for there being no words around the exhibition press. **

Exhibition photos, top right.

Aline Bouvy’s Sorry I slept with your dog was on at Paris’s Exo, running from July 9 to July 16, 2015.

Header image: Aline Bouvy, ‘Beg to bend over I + II’ (2015) Install view. Courtesy Exo, Paris.

  share news item

Bending Binding @ Galerie Alain Gutharc, Sep 5 – 27

4 September 2015

Exo Exo has invited Bending Binding to present a solo presentation titled Loop of Faith at Galerie Alain Gutharc‘s artist-run ‘Passerby’ window, opening September 5 and running until September 27.

The Paris-based curatorial program and an exhibition space Exo Exo has teamed up the Parisian gallery as part of the Galerie Alain Gutharc’s ongoing ‘Passerby’ window display (measuring in at only 98 x 290 x 34 cm), created to present scenes of artist-run project spaces in Paris.

For the display Bending Binding will present Loop of Faith, comprised of an installation of new works created specifically for the space. Previous displays included ones by Tonus, Palette Terre, and Moinsun, and after Loop of Faith, the window will bringing in a presentation by Shanaynay.

See the FB exhibition page for details. **

  share news item

I CUT OUT THE MUG AND WENT TO THE BOTTLE (2015) exhibition photos

4 June 2015

The title could very well be that of winters in Paris, where Exo‘s January show by Strauss Bourque LaFrance and Loup Sarion took place; I cut out the mug and went to the bottle is, after all, what most Europeans do with their winters—at least the ones worth knowing. Maybe its Sarion’s French influence or that of the curatorial programme’s founders, curator Elisa Rigoulet and artist Antoine Donzeaud—either way, the intent is clear: life is hard, drink up.

Or is it? The exhibition’s short descriptor confuses the seemingly basic message, turning around on itself in the paragraph’s last sentence:

I cut out the mug and went to the bottle
cut out the mug and went to the bottle
out of the mug and into the bottle
cut the mug and wet the bottle
I cut out the bottle and went to the mug

I CUT OUT THE MUG AND WENT TO THE BOTTLE (2015). Exhibition view. Exo Exo Gallery.
I CUT OUT THE MUG AND WENT TO THE BOTTLE (2015). Exhibition view. Exo Gallery.

The following—and last—sentence of the exhibition’s abstract simply reads: “It tastes like a strange addiction to process, routines, uses, slides and distorting imagery.” What is the addiction here? Alcohol? Art? Life itself?

The effortless continuity of the two-artist show proves surprising; the two artists come from totally different cultural and artist backgrounds, using unrelated materials in disparate mediums. Yet there is a conversation between the two, a back-and-forth between LaFrance’s bed-sheet canvas-like pieces mimicking ghosts and echoing the American flag and Sarion’s large-scale plaster-glass-et-al installation. Is it the paint-by-numbers kindergarten impression they give? Is it that in both cases, this impression quickly dissolves into some kind of beguiling, something surprisingly sophisticated, or intriguing at the very least? **

Exhibition photos, top right.

I cut out the mug and went to the bottle was on at Paris’s Exo from January 16 to January 23.

Header image: I CUT OUT THE MUG AND WENT TO THE BOTTLE (2015). Exhibition view. Exo Gallery.

  share news item