Thursday, June 4, 2009

Comic Art Exhibition in Paris

Maison Rouge in Paris Opens VRAOUM! An Exhibition of Comic Strips and Contemporary Art

This sounds like an amazing exhibition of comics and other art base on pop culture. Here's another reason we need Star Trek technology to beam us over to Paris for the day to see it :-)

Art Daily describes it as: "PARIS.- VRAOUM! is a celebration of paintings, sculptures and drawings shown side-by-side. There is no hierarchy and certainly no divisions. Comic strips are presented as art and contemporary art as being fuelled by strips. Put simply, this is one big jubilation.

Visitors are welcomed in the foyer by the work of Guillaume Paris and the Taiwanese artist Hsia Fei Chang with, on one side, a column of video screens where cartoon characters fall endlessly into nothingness, and on the other a giant speech bubble made from plastic flowers. Further along, the walls are covered by a superhero's disconcerting shadow, a work by Vuk Vidor, and an impressive montage-collage of comic-strip fragments by Sylvain Paris. Fabien Verschaere's giant Mickey dominates the patio. Facing it, Rivane Neuenschwander invites visitors to draw their own comic inside giant coloured panels. A crumpled cover of the French comic-strip magazine Fluide Glacial lies on the floor, enlarged to monumental proportions by Wang Du with, alongside it, the originals for some of the magazine's most memorable covers. Scattered here and there are wall hung works by Pierre La Police, a singular figure who can just as easily be found in contemporary art as in publishing. Works in the polygonal space are grouped by themes or affinities, branching off into multiple circuits."

The rest of the description continues with a list of artists and how their work is organized, here http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31200 . The photograph on the top left was created by Gilles Barbier (L’Hospice, 2002. Dimensions Variable. Collection privée, courtesy GP & N Vallois, Paris). The lower photo features Rivane Neuenschwander's zé Carioca and Friends : O saci, detail Alain Séchas Lolita, 2001© Marc Domage.