Carmen Perrin — Masomenos — Catherine Putman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 7 → April 30, 2015

Les vernissages de mars 2015 Découvrez notre sélection de vernissages d’expositions du mois de mars 2015.

The Gallery Catherine Putman presents its new exhibition of Carmen Perrin at the occasion of the publication of the book Carmen Perrin entree dehors sorter dedans, which gathers and documents the artist’s production over the last fifteen years: monumental works, ephemeral installations, works integrated into architectural creations, workshop items, drawings.

The Swiss artist born in Bolivia, Carmen Perrin has been also invited to exhibit her work at the Maison de l’Amerique Latine in Paris, from the 7th March to the 16th May.

The first exhibition of the artist at the Gallery, in 2009, articulated itself around two sets which were the large drawings “traced and rotated” and the holes, perforations of Paris Match magazines from the 60s and the 70s. This time the works presented at the exhibition, the recent pieces which represent the current work of the artist, come from different series and demonstrate the diversity of the means of expression of the artist. Springs, coloured foam, city plans, the paper of course, are perforated, spread, stretched, see their primary use being distorted. The relationship to the material in the artist’s works — tension, emptiness, fullness — is also the relationship to the world which surrounds her and to which she is attentive, to the body, hers in the first place, and of the viewers.

The exhibition also presents a new series of books-sculptures made from copies of “dark series” purchased at flea markets. This collection has clearly recognizable aesthetics, yellow and black (we find here by the way the colours of cahiers du cinéma with which Carmen Perrin realised several works), the covers catch an eye of the artist by their style as well as by their unbelievable titles: Une tartine de déconfiture, Avec un élastique, Cadavériquement vôtre … These books are perforated, the text is thinned out, its reading thus interrupted, but the emptiness is then filled out with compact black mass. These open books become closed, become objects, crime story of the “dark series” transforms itself into a black block, we move from the figurative meaning to the literal meaning. Only the fragments of sentences or words resist against the metamorphosis of the book and reinforce the mystery, the intrigue — certainly gripping — and the visual effect which fascinates the artist.

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Carmen Perrin was born in La Paz in Bolivia. In 1960, 7 years old then, her father Alberto decides to go into exile with his entire family in Switzerland where he comes from, from the paternal side. In the city of Calvin, Carmen Perrin completes all her education and her artistic studies. In 1981 she obtains her diploma at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva and in 1986 she begins to teach at this institution. During the course of the same year, she participates in an exhibition at Musée Cantini in Marseille where she settles to live and work there for the next 8 years. In 1993 she obtains the scholarship Landys and Gyr which allows her to live and occupy a workshop during one year in London where she stays for 2 years. Currently she lives and works in Geneva and also occupies regularly a workshop in France. Since the 80s, Carmen Perrin has imposed herself as a plastic artist who realises sculptures. Since the 90s, she begins to work in an increasingly close relationship within the architectural and landscape contexts. She seeks to realise works which articulate relations among light, materials, and architectural and social qualities of public space. In 2005 she decides to stop her practice of teaching to entirely devote herself to her artistic research. Currently she works on projects related to public space and carries out, in the workshop, research which closely articulates the practice of sculpture and of drawing. In 2014 she is nominated a member of the patron’s committee of the Romande Distinction of architecture 2014 (with Daniel Berset, federal counsellor, Philippe Biéler, central president of the Swiss Heritage and Werner Jeker, graphic designer).