Artists: Allora & Calzadilla, Marie-Berthe Aurenche, Victor Brauner, André Breton, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Roberto Cuoghi, David Douard, Paul & Nusch Eluard, Max Ernst, Fabrice Gygi, Thomas Hirschhorn, Georges & Germaine Hugnet, Valentine Hugo, Lisa Jo & Amy Yao, André Masson, Max Morise, Jean-Luc Moulène, Gabriel Orozco, Reena Spaulings, Ariana Reines & Oscar Tuazon, Clément Rodzielski, Yves & Jeanette Tanguy, Wolfgang Tillmans, Tristan Tzara, Danh Võ, Andy Warhol, Haegue Yang, Heimo Zobernig.
The exhibition "Exquisite Corpse" is named after and based on the principle of the game invented by André Breton and the Surrealists in 1925 in Paris to liberate unconscious thought by means of random word and image associations. At first they played with poetic language, then it developed into collaborative drawings.
Surrealist dynamics undermined the logic imposed by language or the figurative and symbolic codes governing the representation of the body in between the two wars. In the current moment of acute...disarray, the deregulated and chaotic imagery in the media offers both the pleasure of anonymous flesh and increasingly morbid depictions of casualties with unclear origins-at once monstrous and fascinating, and increasingly surreal. Chaotic order and confusion convey a beauty that sometimes best reflects the world but also allows us to better grasp it.
Gathered here at The Mistake Room, works based on fragments, on the principle of collage, or on collaboration conjure the original surrealist spirit. But the exhibition itself should also be envisioned as an exquisite corpse. In this playful process, the same bodies are subject to new associations, giving rise to other, possibly more irrational, narratives.
The first approach to an object is metonymic: through fragments, or a cut out of a bigger image. Limbs or body parts might suggest fetishes-a section of Danh Vo's scattered Statue of Liberty, a split jewelry display bust by Clement Rodzielski, a bronze head or a torso in the hands of Gabriel Orozco, a concrete cast of an horror mask by Jean-Luc Moulène, or a detail of an uploaded photo of GI's celebrating Halloween in Afghanistan by Allora & Calzadilla. Other elusive or abstract bodies also appear in Warhol's ambiguous urine splash signature, Fabrice Gygi's leather envelop, Heimo Zobernig's bean bag, or David Douard's deflated airbag.
In addition, contradictory images, removed from their contexts, are combined to scramble our readings. While Wolfgang Tillmans takes aim at image production (while wandering in digital printing and food processing fairs), Thomas Hirschhorn eliminates the hierarchy between fashion and war photography. Haegue Yang celebrates hybridity with a figurative hay vase associating traditional craft and modernity. Furthermore, Roberto Cuoghi's eroded gondola pole becomes a demoniac monument for the Mesapotamian god Pazuzu. Abraham Cruzvillega's recent self-portrait ironically delineates the complexity of his own persona and equilibrium. Oscar Tuazon and writer Ariana Reines collaborated on a Greek-inspired, erected herm, conjugating their differences and complementarity.
Hybridity and ambiguity are indeed the core of any collaborative work which invites distance, a strategy abolishing monolithic authorship that the Surrealists also embraced. Reena Spaulings collectively painted parts of the auto racing and advertising spokeswoman Danica Patrick, while Lisa Jo and Amy Yao seduce us with the trailer of a feature film that might never be released.
Entrada actualizada el el 18 oct de 2021
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