Tableaux Parisiens

TABLEAUX PARISIENS

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TABLEAU PARISIENS october 7 - 9, 2011

with A Constructed World Joianne Bittle Sarah Butler James Ewing Géraldine Longueville & Mark Geffriaud Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel with Isabelle Cornaro Cyrille Maillot Benoît-Marie Moriceau Emilie Parendeau Bruno Persat Chloé Quenum

Graham Day Guerra Christina Hejtmanek Jordan Kantor Aurélien Mole Frédéric Paul Sébastien Pluot Nina Safainia Yann Sérandour Raphaele Shirley Fabien Vallos curated by Nicholas Knight

works reference correspondence

A Constructed World

AthĂŠisme Mat, plastic 60 x 90 inches

2008

please feel free to take off your shoes and dance on this AthÊisme Mat here are some examples of unnamed, ecstatic, intense states that you are free to take as your lead or you can, of course, begin a new direction or style that others may copy or be inuenced by we would be pleased to receive your pictures, phone videos, at constructedworld@mac.com

A Constructed World

AthĂŠisme Floor Dance,

2011-

A Constructed World

AthĂŠisme Floor Dance,

2011-

SĂŠbastien Pluot

Pot Au Feu,

2011

meal cooked by Skype simultaneously in Marfa and Paris

From: Sébastien Pluot Subject: Pot au feu Date: October 7, 2011 7:16:15 AM EDT

To:

Nicholas Knight

Dear Nick, I propose that we cook a pot au feu (meat and vegetables). The idea is that we cook the recipe at the same time (dinner for us, lunch for you).

In les Tableaux Parisiens, Baudelaire is not talking about food at all. Not smell, not taste. It seems he wrote the poems through Skype.

Walter Benjamin, who translated Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens, described in les Passages Parisiens covered streets where restaurants called Bouillons were cooking the pot au feu. But about the smells and taste, again, nothing.

The Bouillon were restaurants for workers, cooking exclusively the pot au feu. They started on Monday and left the bouillon on all week, adding meat and vegetables every day.

Saturday Night Fever was probably due to the taste of the bouillon at the end of the week...delicious.

Here are the ingredients: 4 parts of the beef: flat rib, collar, scotter, chuck turnips, carottes, leeks, persil, potatoes, cloves, thym, bay leafs, oignons, marrow bone.

We need 30 minutes for the preparation and 3 hours cooking. It means you have to start early in the morning, start cooking, and then eat for lunch.

You just need a big pot and a heater. That’s all.

If you cook enough food, you should have more for the dinner. big kiss s

[following pages]

Sébastien Pluot, Graham Day Guerra, and Nicholas Knight

Pot Au Feu,

2011

HD Video 8 min 15 sec

Fabien Vallos with JĂŠrĂŠmie Gaulin

A Specific Dinner,

2011

offset print 8.25 x 5.875 inches edition of 50

A Specific Dinner a eu lieu le 17 septembre 2011 dans le cadre de l’exposition Speech Objet à Blois. Il a été réalisé avec l’artiste Jérémie Gaulin, parce qu’il est, avant toute chose, un ami. Réalisé un banquet se fait d’abord comme expérience de l’altérité. Cela n’a pas de sens autrement. Nous avons réuni cinquante convives à qui nous avons servi, ce soir-là, quinze plats. A Specific Dinner appartient à une réflexion sur l’œuvre que je nomme Devenir dimanche. Parce que l’œuvre – du moins ce qu’il reste de l’œuvre – n’est, peut-être, rien d’autre qu’une expérience de l’adresse et de la mise au commun. C’est ce qu’il m’intéresse de faire voir. Il faut penser ici ce que signifie ce «faire voir».

Il n’en reste, ici, que cinquante objet imprimé qui présente le menu incrusté dans le cartouche central d’une gravure de 1515 de Urs Graf. À droite et à gauche deux figures encadrent la liste : il s’agit, nommés en grec, de tou Kairou et de è Némésis, autrement dit le présent de la saisie et le souvenir de ce qu’il reste à devoir.

Fabien Vallos

A Specific Dinner was held September 17, 2011 as part of the exhibition Speech Object in Blois. It was made with the artist Jeremy Gaulin, who is, above all, a friend. Making a banquet is first an experience of otherness. It makes no sense otherwise. We assembled fifty guests that evening, to whom we served fifteen dishes. A Specific Dinner is a reflection on the work that I call Becoming Sunday. Because the work - at least what remains of the work - is, perhaps, nothing but the experience of the establishment of commonality. This is what interests me to see. Think what it means here, “to see”.

What remains, here, are fifty printed menus, inlaid in the central niche of an engraving from 1515 by Urs Graf. Right and left, two figures frame the list: Kairou and Nemesis, as they were called in Greece. In other words, the seizure of the present and the memory of what is left to duty.

Joianne Bittle

Faustine’s Paysage,

2011

oil and charcoal on 2 panels, mirrors, neon telephone, wood, rabbit skins, flourescent light with colored filter 64 x 49 x 27 inches courtesy of Churner & Churner, New York

Bittle reference materials

Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel, 1940

[right] Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas, 1984 Balenciaga Store, Paris, France, 2010 Alain Resnais, Last Year at Marienbad, 1961

Joianne Bittle (featuring Raphaele Shirley)

Salon of Sorts,

2011

plaster cast of baboon death mask mounted on vintage wood plaque, graphite, peacock feathers, vase, vintage telephone, photographs from “Show World� archive, printed materials size determined by installation courtesy of Churner & Churner, New York

Raphaele Shirley

Excerpts from The Show World Archive, 2-sided xerox copy 11 x 8.5 inches

2011

On 23 September 2011, Frédéric Paul, a curator and critic in Paris, met for a 20-minute Skype conversation with Nicholas Knight in New York. The conversation was not recorded.

Instead, immediately following their meeting, each of them separately reconstructed their talk, from memory and notes. What follows are both accounts of their conversation.

Frédéric Paul in Conversation with Nicholas Knight

by Frédéric Paul Nicholas Knight: What do you think about when you think about context, for instance when preparing an exhibition?

Frédéric Paul: I never think about context. I do think of the thing which is in front of me or the concept I have to struggle with. I only enlarge my vision later.

For instance, when preparing an exhibition, I never think at first about the place where to install a piece.

When I want it to be included in a show, it’s not according to local considerations. Even local context is not local if you think about the time parameter.

It’s what it is at the time you are exposed to it but it was so one year before for another person, which doesn’t mean it’s the same place for different persons or even for the same person. When you are part of the context, you change it.

What interests me is the context that provides an artwork. Not the way it will possibly interact in this space. Of course they will interact. But it doesn’t interest me to expect the singular way it’ll interact before. Singular is not enough. What interests me is when the interactions can’t be anticipated.

NK: Do you mean you prefer to deal with existing works?

FP: Not really. But I must say, even though it’s thrilling to commission new works, I don’t pay more attention to new ones than to existing ones. The existing ones can’t be considered as dead objects and the new as the only living ones, as we usually read in a Press Release. The way we are looking at a painting by Velázquez is different than it was at the time the painter was making it. We know. It was also different for the artist himself the day he finished it and one week or one year later. Context and History are complementary concepts which means, to be complementary, they are different like parts in a puzzle game.

Nicholas Knight in Conversation with Frédéric Paul

by Nicholas Knight Nicholas Knight: I want to start today with a question about “context”. You organized many exhibitions at the Domaine de Kerguehennec, including a major Mel Bochner show, which is when we first met. Kerguehennec, of course, is in France, but the rural and historical context of that art center must have been unusual even for many French artists. Was that something that you thought was important to introduce to them as you collected works for exhibitions?

Frédéric Paul: This may be a surprise, but in fact I was hardly concerned with that at all. Every artwork provides its own context, and this is much more important than the context of the exhibition venue. The artwork has its own life that cannot be separated from this context, even though the exhibition might obscure it.

NK: So there is a correct way to understand the artwork, by honoring the primary context that comes with it?

FP: No, not at all. I am absolutely sure that there are more ways to understand it, there would be nothing interesting about it if there were only one way. But because the work must have a specific connection to when and how it is made, those conditions will always play an important role when it comes into an exhibition.

NK: I’m a little surprised to hear this approach. It sounds like the context is something inherent to the work.

FP: Yes. NK: The reason I ask you about this is because of the unusual setting for the exhibition I’m working on, which is Marfa. The initial spark of my idea was that the context was so out of step with the artworks being produced in Paris that the juxtaposition would automatically create some friction.

FP: But you haven’t changed any contexts. What you’re really talking about is “the idea of changing contexts.” If I have an idea for an artwork while walking down the street, “the street” does not have be part of the context for the work.

NK: Yes, right, because I haven’t done the show yet.

FP: If we think about this like a writer, if you wanted to describe a large, busy city, it might not be best to be sitting in front of a window looking at that city.

FP / NK : FP

NK: So there is no context.

FP: Not at all. Nothing is context. But all is context too. You and me are not only part of the context, we are the context. What’s the actual context is the brain of the artist filled with images, recollections, experiences, but also affected by very low concerns.

When you walk in the street and you have a foot disease, you don’t see the same street. In the meantime, the street has changed a lot because other people are there, other cars are passing around, other international events affect our way of seeing.

NK: Is it the context?

FP: Artists don’t always need a studio to work in.

The street might be the place where ideas will come.

But these ideas will probably and most certainly have no relation to the things in the surroundings. The best place for a writer who tries to describe a huge and noisy neighborhood is not necessarily this place.

It will require another... context! Words provide you with a context that allow you to escape the context as well as to change it a little bit. There is violence in the context. The words that come affect your way of thinking while looking for the right way to express it!

They are all available but you just have the freedom to use them or not and then to arrange them in the order you want to.

NK: And what about the meaning?

FP: The best art works can’t be understood as having only one meaning. The best ones are those of which the meaning is always changing according to time and people. That’s the reason I suggested to add some early drawings in the large Measurement Piece that Mel Bochner did in Kerguehennec with your help at the time that I ran an art space. My intention was not to fill the spaces. My idea was to make the works interact. And that’s also the reason I didn’t make it in every room used for this major Measurement Piece.

Interaction is the proof that context counts or not.

Even when two works are in opposite rooms and different buildings, if they are part of an exhibition both of them change the way you look at the other.

Space becomes time.

NK / FP : NK

It might be better to be in a small cabin far away. Of course you have all your reference materials around you, you must be surrounded by the ideas you want to capture. In this sense the context is like a remote country. Or more to the point, context is mostly words. And words bring with them a type of certainty.

NK: Let me try to find another way to approach this. What about the context created by different artworks? Surely putting two works next to each other will change the way they are understood.

FP: Of course! When I am selecting works for an exhibition, the most important thought is how will this work go with the other works. That is really what the process is about, trying to make this combination. But that is not a question of putting one next to another in the space, or in the next room. That decision comes at the very end. “What” comes before “where”.

NK: So the work must already be in a discursive space. In a sense then it has already transformed itself into words.

FP: The artist’s studio is not a “print”. It is more like a brain. It is so open and changing that is not really fair to go in there sometimes and pull something out. I would not commission a work, for example, until I have a very deep understanding of what the artist is about. And that begins with observation of how the artist’s work has played a role in the world. Then it’s necessary to get all the way inside the work, to surround yourself with it and the ideas that are in play. You have to begin to see the world according to its rules. And of course, this new vision can also make you blind.

NK: That points to a paradox in what we have been discussing. To say that “having clear vision is a form of blindness” seems analogous to this idea that a work brings a fundamental context with it, and yet that context is changeable, it is always at stake.

FP: Of course we cannot see a Velázquez the way he did when it was painted.

And in twenty more years it will be something different again. But when you consider art as a mode of being in the world, then both the work and the world are always transforming. One thing I know is that it is impossible to always see all artworks as artworks. Sometimes you will see the art in something, and sometimes you will not. It can depend on many things, like your mood. But when you see it, it transforms your vision.

NK: It becomes very challenging to locate when and where the artwork is functioning. The context, the discourse, what we understand to be the work at all, they are always shifting, and yet there is something specific and local in the work that must be respected.

FP: It is the changing that matters. Art is not creation, it is transformation.

GĂŠraldine Longueville & Mark Geffriaud

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,

2007 - 2009

courtesy of galerie J, GĂŠraldine Longueville & Mark Geffriaud

The man who shot Liberty Valance

The man who shot Liberty Valance January 17th – February 13th 2007.

United States, in the cities of : Freedom, Love, Joy, Unity, Independence, Hope, Triumph, Comfort, Utopia, Pride, Truth or Consequences, and Harmony.

January 17th – February 13th 2007.

With : Aurélien Froment, Alessandro Nassiri, Jean Barberis, Aurélie United in the cities of : Joseph, Renaud Auguste Dormeuil, Godard,States, Eric Stephany, Pierre Freedom, Love,Julien Joy, Unity, Independence, Triumph, Bruno Persat, Bismuth, Dominique Hope, Blais, Mark Geffriaud, Comfort, Utopia,Pierre Pride,Leguillon.

Truth or Consequences, and Harmony.

Virginie Yassef, With : Aurélien Froment, Alessandro Nassiri, Jean Barberis, Aurélie Curated by: Godard, Eric Stephany,and Pierre Joseph, Renaud Auguste Dormeuil, Géraldine Longueville Mark Geffriaud.

Bruno Persat, Julien Bismuth, Dominique Blais, Mark Geffriaud, Virginie Yassef, Pierre Leguillon.

The Man who shot Liberty Valance started with research on mental and allegorical cartography from the ďŹ rst expeditions in Terra Incognita to the exploration of the Moon, from the Map of Tender to the plan of Disney World. Casting our eyes over a map of present-day America, we were struck by the recurrence of cities named Love, Joy, Triumph or Justice, called after the aspirations of the pioneers, utopian or religious communities who had settled there.

We decided to stop in twelve of these cities in a trip through the country and to invite the same number of artists to think of a project we could make for them on site.

The idea of the show being stretched in imagination to the size of a continent and the fact that it would last the time required to travel from East Coast to West Coast linked it straight away to some sort of road-movie mythology. Following the instructions, statements and directions for use prepared in advance by the artists and received by post or email, we made twelve pieces along a 12 000 km drive, slowly drawing a new map, our own map of a somewhat new land, The United States of Mind.

Sarah Butler

Machines for Thinking, DEF, marker on plastic 16 x 22 inches each

2011

Modern use has tended to associate concept with the word “original” in the sense of new or abnormal.

But the end of ideas is utility, fitness and delight. If a discovery, it should be a discovery of what seems inevitable, an inspiration arising out of the conditions, and parallel to invention in the sciences. The faculty of conception has best flourished when an almost spontaneous development was taking place in the arts, and while certain classes of arts, more or less noble, were generally demanded and the demand copiously satisfied, as in the production of Chinese porcelain, Greek vases, Byzantine mosaics, Gothic cathedrals and Renaissance paintings. Thus where a “school of thought” arises there is much general likeness in the products but also a general progress. The common experience—“tradition”—is a part of each artist’s stock in trade; and all are carried along in a stream of continuous exploration. Some of the arts, writing, for instance, have been little touched by conscious originality in concept, all has been progress, or, at least, change, in response to conditions. Under such a system, in a time of progress, the proper limitations react as intensity; when limitations are removed the concepteur has less and less upon which to react, and unconditioned liberty gives them nothing at all to lean on. Thought is response to needs, conditions and aspirations. The Greeks so well understood this that they appear to have consciously restrained themselves to the development of selected types, not only in architecture and literature, but in domestic arts, like pottery. Ideation with them was less the new than the true.

As excerpted from the Encyclopedia Britannica entry DESIGN, for which there is no unique English-to-French translation (1959).

Christina Hejtmanek

Sunset, Nine Variations (Near Glass Mts), nine c-prints 13.375 x 9.5 inches each courtesy of blackston, New York

2007 / 2009

Yann Sérandour

L’Espace, Lui-Même,

2007 - 2011

folded screeprint on newspaper sent by airmail 43 x 32 inches collection of Michael and Lea Morgan, Oklahoma City

AurĂŠlien Mole

Flatland,

2003 / 2011

two pigment prints 15 x 15 x 10 inches collection of Brian and TiTi Fitzsimmons, Oklahoma City

Graham Day Guerra

Modern Lovers,

2011

graphite on pigment print 60 x 80 inches

From: 220 jours Subject: Re: show in Marfa, october Date: July 26, 2011 11:21:07 AM EDT

To:

Nicholas Knight

Dear Nicholas, we’ve been thinking and talking about the skype sculpture and couldn’t turn it into something that fits our practice and current research.

Instead we would like to communicate with the other participants and the audience of the skype sculpture through post-it papers which could be pasted around or on the different computers’ screens.

For some time now and especially during our stay in Japan, we’ve been reluctant to use skype and chose to use other slowlier medias to communicate. In the context of your project, we think that it would make more sense to keep on working that way.

So we could send you handwritten post-its (by us, but also imagined by artists we would like to involve in this project as Bruno Persat, Cyrille Maillot or Julien Crépieux) that you could display wherever you think fits on the computers or in the exhibition space during the course of the show...

We hope you will like the idea.

Please let us know your thoughts.

Best, Yoann and Elodie

From: Subject: Date: To:

220 jours Re: post-it October 5, 2011 5:40:12 PM EDT Nicholas Knight

hi Nicholas, hope all goes well in marfa and that you’ve received the notes!? here are their captions: “find, organize, dispense, express, sustain and present (notes on Tableaux Parisiens in Marfa)” Isabelle Cornaro Notes on Painting, 2011 Six painted Post-it notes 5x5 cm each Cyrille Maillot Untitled, 2011 Post-it notes, flies, glue 0.59 x 3.03 x 3.03 in each Benoît-Marie Moriceau Smoky Prophecy, 2011 Emilie Parendeau Post-it Postcard, 2011 Post-it sent by mail Bruno Persat Untitled (my little nephews), 2011 Chloé Quenum Variations around instructions for mobile constructions, 2011 Post-it note, ink Elodie Royer and Yoann Gourmel a note that used to mark the page 191 of bruno munari’s design as art all the best for the show y&é

Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel

find, organize, dispense, express, sustain, and present,

2011

with contributions by Isabelle Cornaro, BenoÎt-Marie Moriceau, Cyrille Maillot, Emilie Parendeau, Bruno Persat, Chloé Quenum: A project by Elodie Royer and Yoann Gourmel

BenoÎt-Marie Moriceau

Isabelle Cornaro

Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel

ChloĂŠ Quenum

Cyrille Maillot

Jordan Kantor

ET/DE,

2011

digital video (black and white, silent) 0:18 minutes + bound book with 166 xerox copies

From: Jordan Kantor Studio Subject: Re: detail for Marfa Date: September 12, 2011 5:51:53 PM EDT

To:

Nicholas Knight

hey, I think I was able to make a preview version small enough to email. Let me know if you can see this.

It is a test, but you get 95% of the idea. It would have a title sequence and be looped.

It is a still sequence of successive, generational photocopies (copy of a copy of a copy, etc) until the image disappears.

The image is a portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Manet painted by Degas that Manet cropped (to cut out his wife) after he traded Degas for the painting. After an argument, they untraded, and Degas got the cropped painting back.

Let me know if you are interested.

Best JK <Manet xerox film 2 test (sm)-desktop.m4v>

AurĂŠlien Mole

Delay Pedal,

2011

Skype transmission 60 minutes

From: Subject: Date: To:

Aurelien Mole Re : details for Marfa September 12, 2011 2:19:32 PM EDT Nicholas Knight

Hi Nicholas, Good to hear from you.

I was thinking of you and your show lately.

Regarding the show and the skype interventions, I was planning to do a series of sunsets over objects : Each day, a different object on a coloured background will be displayed in front of my computer’s webcam one hour before sunset.

So the light will slowly decrease until dusk.

I think that it will be around 12pm. at Marfa when sun goes down in Paris.

Does it seem ok to you ?

Hope you’re doing well.

Best regards, Aurélien

AurĂŠlien Mole

Evian Bottle,

2011

Skype transmission 60 minutes

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Parc Central â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Brasilia, video 2 mins 52 seconds

2006

James Ewing

French Communist Party headquarters, Paris, by Oscar Niemeyer c. 1967, Building Entrance, 2010 c-print 30 x 50 inches [left]

French Communist Party headquarters, Paris,

by Oscar Niemeyer c. 1967, Stage of Main Conference Hall, 2010 c-print 50 x 30 inches

From: Subject: Date: To:

Nina Safainia Re: untitled smoke September 28, 2011 11:19:17 AM EDT Nicholas Knight

yes !

On 28 Sep 2011, at 16:56, Nicholas Knight wrote:

Hi Nina, What I propose is that I go there with this short list of strategies for making your piece.

I will try first to get as close to the original idea as possible. Then I may need to use an alternative strategy, like two straws pretending to be one. Strategies: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Original proposal: hole through exterior wall of gallery, with straw Hole through interior wall or corridor of gallery, with straw Hole through ext. wall off-site, preferably a building in disrepair, or a jail, with straw Two straws, one inside, one outside, giving the appearance of a hole

xNick

On Sep 28, 2011, at 10:47 AM, Nina Safainia wrote:

Dear Nick i understand the difficulties for the realisation of the whole. do you have an inner wall somewhere in the exposition space or in a corridor ? or a straw not coming out the outside but with another one sticked in the wall at the outer wall ? as it is part of a film, my taste is better not have a title for an idea. if you need one use â&#x20AC;&#x153;untitledâ&#x20AC;?. i think if the position of the piece is well done, two straws sticking out pretending being one could work, too. kisses to nyc nina

On 27 Sep 2011, at 15:54, Nicholas Knight wrote:

Dear Nina, I think it will only be Joi coming over. I will be sad not to join her.

Your idea is terrific. It is elegant and it exploits the ideas of the exhibition with great poetry.

However, it will not be possible to complete as you have described. I will not have the time or resources to create --and repair!-- a hole through the one-foot-thick brick walls. If the circumstances of this show were different, we would do the piece.

The attached image of the gallery space will show the difficulty here. bisous Nick <IMG_0606.jpg> On Sep 26, 2011, at 8:18 AM, Nina Safainia wrote:

Dear Nick hope all is well. when are you coming to Paris ? or is it just Joi flying over ?? this week end, we discussed our little architectural intervention : it ll be a little whole in a outer wall, between the exposition space and an accessible space outside (height 90 cm et diameter about 0,5 cm) there will be a straw sticking out at both sides giving the opportunity for two people to share their air, cigarette etc. it s between intimity and distance (shown in an old movie with Jean Genet) tell me what you think.... big kiss Nina

published on the occasion of Tableaux Parisiens curated by Nicholas Knight The Do Right Hall 110 W. Dallas Street Marfa, Texas October 7 - 9, 2011

by EponanonyPress, New York, 2011 No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.

Copyright for each artwork belongs to its artist.

Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator, 1923

designed by Nicholas Knight photography by Nicholas Knight and James Ewing except the following: Rachel Churner (2, 79); Jacqueline Riva and Geoff Lowe (18, 19); Google Images (30, 31).

Thanks to: Buck Johnston and Camp Bosworth David Lanman Etienne Bernard Gregory Smelley Rachel Churner Rhiannon Kubicka Galerie J The artists

Catalog made possible by the generous support of Churner & Churner, Blackston, Dr. Albert Pierce, Michael and Lea Morgan, and AurĂŠlien Mole.

ISBN: 978-1-4675-0716-5

Nina Safainia

Untitled,

2011

architectural intervention, drinking straw

A Constructed World Joianne Bittle Sarah Butler James Ewing Géraldine Longueville & Mark Geffriaud Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel with Isabelle Cornaro Cyrille Maillot Benoît Marie-Moriceau Emilie Parendeau Bruno Persat Chloé Quenum

Graham Guerra Christina Hejtmanek Jordan Kantor Aurélien Mole Frédéric Paul Sébastien Pluot Nina Safainia Yann Serandour Raphaele Shirley Fabien Vallos curated by Nicholas Knight