There Are Two Sides to Every Coin, and Two Sides to Your Face

There Are Two Sides to Every Coin, and Two Sides to Your Face

10.09.11 29.10.11

Xippas Paris Past
THERE ARE TWO SIDES 3

Curated by Carlos Cardenas

Carl andre, farah atassi, sophie bueno-boutellier, stéphane calais, martin soto climent, andy coolquitt, alistair frost, anthea hamilton, evan holloway, rashid johnson, bruce nauman, raha raissnia, claudia wieser.
Galerie Xippas is pleased to launch the 2011-2012 season with “There are two sides to every coin, and two sides to your face”, the first exhibition curated by new gallery director, Carlos Cardenas.

The exhibiting artists hail from widely disparate geographical locations: Europe, the US, Latin-America, the Middle-east; represent a wide array of aesthetic practices: painting, sculpture, installation, film, photography, sound, poetry; and range in career status from relatively fresh young things, to art historical heavy-weights.

The title to the exhibition alludes to cold, hard fact … but employs literary tropes that allude to ambiguity, double-speak, irony, contradiction, and confusion; perhaps even hypocrisy …

Despite the consciously slippery propositions that may come about in the constructed narratives between and across the different works, there are however, some prisms through which bits of light may be seen: symmetry and its cousins, reflection, opacity, gravity, defiance of gravity, liquid architecture (the ability to walk through walls, etc.), radical social discomfort and the letting-go (“lâcher prises”), and finally, the all-but-entirely-forgotten great project of Modernism.
Carl Andre (b. 1935 in Quincy, Massachusets), is among the towering figures of Minimalism. Most well known for his geometrically ordered installations of bricks or metal tiles, for this exhibition we present a selection of his concrete poetry. He has recently exhibited at Yvon Lambert in Paris, Paula Cooper in New York, Sadie Coles in London, and Konrad Fischer in Berlin.

Farah Atassi (b. 1981 in Brussels) is among the most visible members of the emerging Parisian scene. Her referentially rich paintings of abandoned interiors push notions of traditional representation of space, and lead to a more solitary and psychologically charged experience. She has recently exhibited at the Galerie Xippas, ‘Dynasty’ at the Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Salon de Montrouge, the Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou, and will be included in the upcoming Curitiba Biennial.

Sophie Bueno-Boutellier (b. 1974 in Toulouse), lives and works in Berlin. Her installations and paintings are heavily influence by theosophical mysticism, and are models of time and space bending transcendence. She has recently exhibited at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Circus Gallery in Berlin, Antidote at the Galerie de Galeries Lafayette in Paris. She was short-listed for the Prix du Fondation Ricard in 2009, and currently has a solo exhibition at Freymond-Guth in Zurich.

Stéphane Calais (b. 1967 in Arras, France) is one of the primary figures of influence for the current generation of emerging artists in France. His paintings, sculpltures and installations are formal investigations heavily based on organic growth translated to formal grandeur. Recent exhibitions include Bernier Eliades in Athens, ZieherSmith in NYC, Aliceday in Brussels, the Pompidou Center, CREDAC Ivry, and the Espace Claude Berri in Paris. He was short-listed for the 2008 Prix Marcel Duchamp.

Andy Coolquitt (b. 1964 Texas), lives and works between New York and Austin, Texas. His formally beautiful and socially ideological works employ found or recycled materials, and channel such diverse issues and references as mid-century modernist design, classical Minimalism, as well as public spaces for private use (ie. illicit drug consumption in inner cities). He has recently exhibited with Lisa Cooley in New York, Zero in Milan, and Johan Konig in Berlin. In 2012 Coolquitt will have a solo exhibition at the Blaffer Museum in Houston, Texas. A full-color monograph published by UT Press will accompany the exhibition and will feature contributions from Dan Fox, Matthew Higgs and Jan Tumlir. This will be the first time his work is exhibited in France.

Alistair Frost (b. 1981 England) lives and works in London. His simultaneously reductive and generous canvases refer as much to painterly issues of color, scale, brush stroke, and representation as they do to clip art and other graphics for quick communication and easy consumption. He has recently exhibited at Hotel in London, Micky Schubert in Berlin, and has an upcoming solo exhibition at Zach Feuer in New York. This will be his first exhibition in France.

Anthea Hamilton (b. 1978 London). The sculptures and installations of Anthea Hamilton are seemingly in constant reference to the dramatic and corporal arts of dance, cinema and theatre – sometimes employing all at once in the service of bodies and/or objects of desire. She has recently exhibited at the Kunstverein Freiburg, the Salle de Bains in Lyon, the Chisenhale Gallery and Ibid Projects in London. She was on the cover of the summer 2011 issue of Frieze, and featured in an article by Martin Herbert.

Evan Holloway (b. 1967 Miranda, California) lives and works in Los Angeles. The enigmatic, almost art-brut, sculptures of Evan Holloway can just as often employ complex conceptual and logical strategies as they can be formally engaged with certain notions of craft, employing widely different materials such as dried flowers, tree branches, basic electronics, or welded steel. He has recently exhibited at the SF MoMA, the Hammer Museum in LA, Marc Foxx in LA, Harris Lieberman in New York, the Approach in London, and Xavier Hufkens in Brussels. This is the first time we have the privilege of seeing his work in Paris.

Rashid Johnson (b. 1977 Chicago) lives and works in New York. The installations of Rashid Johnson are altars of socially coded objects such as short-wave radios, album flats, shea butter, plants, books … channeling diverse references to African-American cultural figures, intellectual movements, and secret societies such as the Harlem Renaissance, Back to Africa, the Black Panther Party, Sun-Ra, Funkadelic, Blaxploitation … His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Massimo de Carlo in Milan, Carlson Gallery in London, Guido W. Baudach in Berlin, David Kordansky in LA. His work is currently on view in ‘Illuminations’ at the Arsenale of the Venice Biennale, and has an upcoming solo exhibition at the MCA in Chicago. This is the first time his work will be exhibited in France.

Bruce Nauman (b. 1941 Indiana) is the greatest living artist.

Martin Soto Climent (b. 1977 Mexico City). The whimsical and erotically charged works of Martin Soto Climent employ a stunningly reductive economy of means to achieve an uncanny soup of humor, sensuality, anthropomorphism, and revisited notions of the ready-made. His work has recently been exhibited at Karma International and the Migros Museum in Zurich, Clifton-Benevento in New York, T293 in Naples, and the CAPC Bordeaux.

Raha Raissnia (b. 1968 Tehran, Iran). The abstract paintings, drawings, films, and live performances of Raha Raissnia are inspired by Persian calligraphy, visionary utopic architecture, representations and usage of technology, as well as employing clear historical references to the Materialist-Structuralist and non-objective film movements. She has recently exhibited at Galerie Xippas in Paris, Miguel Abreu in New York, and will be included in the forthcoming “Pulso Iranio” at Oi Futuro in Rio de Janeiro.

Claudia Wieser (b. 1973 Freilassing, Germany). The drawings, installations, and relief sculptures of Claudia Wieser use abstract geometrical tropes and reflective materials to transcend a context of the purely rational or the simply representational. The resulting sensations can often have a dizzying Alice-in-Wonderland effect, where the viewer seems to confront decompositions of architectural space and varying representations of scale: from molecular-like symmetry and abstraction, to a classical modernist vocabulary of the flat picture plane, to representations of larger than life landscapes. She has recently exhibited at Sies+Hoke in Dusseldorf, Ben Kaufman in Berlin, and at the Drawing Center in New York.

Special thanks to all the artists and their galleries: Miguel Abreu, the Approach, Bernier-Eliades, Massimo de Carlo, Circus, Clifton-Benevento, Lisa Cooley, Paula Cooper, Konrad Fischer, Marc Foxx, Freymond-Guth, Galerie Kamm, Ben Kaufmann, David Kordansky, Harris Lieberman, Hotel, Xavier Hufkens, Ibid, Karma International, Yvon Lambert, Anthony Meier, Salon 94, Sies + Hoke, Zieher-Smith

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