Disparité et Demande — Une proposition de Pedro de Llano, curateur en résidence — La Galerie, centre d’art contemporain — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 24 → July 12, 2014

The exhibition Disparity and Demand explores the role of affects in contemporary urban life, social networks and production systems. From domestic spaces to virtual environments, this exhibition addresses the interstitial spaces in which “effectivity” and “affectivity” struggle.

The exhibition’s title Disparity and Demand is the title of one of Juan Luis Moraza’s works : deliberately technocratic, this title wryly refers to the ambiguous status of contemporary affects. “Disparity“ invites us to think about unequal relationships between individuals, but can also refer to the bureaucratic, commercial and virtual Leviathan. On the other hand, ”demand“ seems to suggest a kind of ”vampirism" created by markets, governments and social networking that speculates upon emotions and that people have to deal with on a daily basis. Paris, a city where this bipolar nature of affects is always present and conflictual, as highlighted in much of the best contemporary French cinema (L’inconnu du lac — Stranger by the Lake — by Alain Guiraudie or Jeune et Jolie — Young and Beautiful — by François Ozon) seems to be an ideal place to start a conversation about this paradox.

An important inspiration for the exhibition was The Affectivist Manifesto (2008) by Brian Holmes in which he defines affect as a “shared reality” — “a split from the private self in which each person was formerly enclosed, and from the social order which imposed that particular type of privacy or privation”. This concept indicates the different scales in which affect acts: intimacy, society, the virtual world with all their possible levels or internal nuances: friendship, family, love, nation, culture, etc.

The exhibition reflects the concept of expanding the private sphere to social space: it grows in a spiral movement centred around the intimate character of Juan Luis Moraza’s work. It then expands via the works installed in the rooms facing the street, with a more intense social vocation, such as the diagrams by Ricardo Basbaum, the stories by Loreto Martínez Troncoso or Babi Badalov’s efforts to get the political refugee status in France — dissolving the boundaries between the interior and exterior of La Galerie.

Juan Luis Moraza

Juan Luis Moraza (Vitoria, 1960) is one of the most important Spanish artists of his generation. He is currently preparing an exhibition scheduled to open in late 2014 at the Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid). The works selected for Disparity and demand are taken from a series of moulds of kisses produced in 2004 that at the same time, may be related with intimacy or the sense of touch and also warn us “about the terrible codification, registration and capitalization of the affects; an evocation of emotional capitalism via three-dimensional snapshots of the physicality of the kiss.”

Babi Badalov

The project, Bureaucratic Diaries (2010-2014) by Babi Badalov (Lerik, Azerbaijan, 1959, based in Paris) is a collection of ten files with double-sided A4 pages, which guide us through the depressing months in the life of someone waiting for “redemption” as a political refugee, seized by fear and frustration. This work reflects Badalov’s experience when he requested asylum in France in 2008 and can be interpreted as a cry against bureaucracy and formalism, a representation of the panic to convert oneself into a hostage of language. It is also a meditation about the struggle to adapt to a new place and the obstacles that we must overcome in order to “belong” to it — either as travellers, migrants or exiles.

Mauro Cerqueira

On the basis of his daily experience in the streets of Porto, Mauro Cerqueira (Guimarães, 1982) has created a radically interdisciplinary project — consisting of sculptures, installations, paintings, collages, photographs, videos, performances, artist’s books, etc.. — which can be seen as a comprehensive chronicle of the decline of Portuguese society. For the first time in France Le Galerie hereby presents a series of works in which empathy and affect play a central role: videos, artist’s books and assemblages of objects that serve as a kind of collective portrait of his neighbourhood in Porto, threatened by collapse and gentrification, and starring his neighbours : Paulo, Serafim, Luis…

Loreto Martínez Troncoso

The work of Loreto Martínez Troncoso (Vigo, 1978, based in Paris) investigates the dialectical relationship between presence and absence. She views language as a primary expressive instrument, but never in an innocent manner. Instead she questions and transforms language into works that adopt various appearances, such as performances, sound works, texts or even drawings. La Galerie presents a recent project entitled Puls[at]ion (2014) in which the artist addresses a stranger, perhaps the viewer, in order to speak about love and encounters in the streets between people who fleetingly cross paths and then disappear.

Loretta Fahrenholz

My Throat My Air is a video directed by Loretta Fahrenholz (Germany, 1981) in 2013. As in her previous works, such as Implosion (2011) or Ditch Plains (2013), Fahrenholz transforms ordinary people into actors, in order to create stories in which reality and fiction question each other. On this occasion, the artist stages a family drama in Munich’s petty-bourgeois Westend, starring former Fassbinder actor, Warhol collaborator, and horror movie director Ulli Lommel. The scenes unfold in an unreal atmosphere, wherein issues such as precarity, play, and humour merge in a same narrative. My Throat My Air could be described as a European and existential version of South Park; its characters inhabit a similar environment, acting parsimoniously as if they were drugged, or responding to absurd impulses. At certain points they all stage a violent death — except for the “mother”, who claims that she comes from a planet in which everything is “ethereal and incorporeal. ”

Ricardo Basbaum

The diagrams of Ricardo Basbaum (São Paulo, 1961) are, in his own words, “potential spaces for activation of desire and intent… stimulating awareness… structures for an encounter in a place that is not mediated by education… producers of subjectivity, etc.”. The diagrams are rooted in the collaborative practice of Brazilian artists from former generations, such as Lygia Clark or Hélio Oiticica, who viewed affect as a central issue. This is the first time that Basbaum’s work will be exhibited in France, notwithstanding his close links to the country via the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, poststructuralism or texts by Brian Holmes about his work. In La Galerie, Basbaum will present a new series of diagrams scattered around the floor. He will also organise a workshop in June, in which he will produce a new sound work included within the series, collective conversations, that the artist has been producing recently.