Rumeurs du Louvre / Rumeurs du Monde — Performance de Nick Cave — Le Louvre — Performance — Slash Paris

Past: Saturday, December 10, 2011 at 8 PM

Nick Cave Performance by the African‐American artist with his Soundsuits

The American visual artist and choreographer Nick Cave makes sculpted, full-body costumes from everyday and found objects using techniques worthy of the fashion world’s leading designers. Worn by dancers, his extravagant costumes rattle and resonate with the movement of the wearers, producing a sensory experience at the intersection of carnival, ritual ceremony and technicolor trance. This exceptional performance at the Louvre will be the artist’s first appearance in France."

The artist studied textile arts at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Today he is professor and head of the Fashion Design Department at the Art Institute of Chicago. Nick Cave is a sculptor, dancer and performance artist. He is known for his Soundsuits, exposed at the Galerie Suzanne Tarasiève for the first time in France.

These extravagant, colorful and bright sculptures, whose name comes from the rattling noise of the first prototype, have been assembled to present his whole work in a traveling exhibition that began in March in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Art Center.

Nick Cave has been part of the collective exhibition 30 Americans organized by the Rubell Family Collection / Contemporary Arts Foundation. His works are described as a cross between carnival, an African ceremony and haute couture.

In an explosion of colors and textures, Cave relies on his extensive knowledge of many disciplines (textile arts, fashion design and dance), to create powerful sculptural combinations and unusual pieces made of found objects.

The Soundsuits are composed of materials such as buttons, tabs, plastic beads, potholders, metal flowers, twigs, tops and human hair. Some have heavy headgear made of ceramic flowers, birds, or rabbits. They are designed to allow a complete sensory experience. One characteristic of Nick Caveʼs work is to push his art beyond the limits of the exhibition gallery. It blurs the boundaries between visual art and performance. The dance then makes us forget the object and the one who animates it (the dancer) to make room for the sound and the movement.

Nick Cave, born in 1959, lives and works in Chicago (Illinois, United States)