PRESS RELEASE LA SERRE at mfc 2 by LA VILLE RAYÉE mfc 2 will take place from November 22, 2013 to January 4, 2014 The opening will be held on Thursday November 21, 2013 from 6 to 9 pm, in presence of La Serre and La Ville Rayée SUMMARY x1 at mfc 2 by x2 = a new concept of programming at mfc-michèle didier gallery - p. 2 La Serre is x1 - p. 4 La Ville Rayée is x2 - p. 6 Contact - p. 8 mfc-michèle didier 66, rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, 75003 Paris info@micheledidier.com - www.micheledidier.com Phone +33 (0)1 71 97 49 13 - mobile +33 (0)6 09 94 13 46 - fax +32 (0)2 374 75 98
x1 at mfc 2 by x2 = a new concept of programming at mfc-michèle didier For two years now, mfc-michèle didier gallery in Paris has been dedicated to presenting the productions made by the eponym publisher. Since its opening, it has also the purpose of fostering the reflection on the specific discipline of the artist s book. Furthermore, the gallery offers the possibility to enhance the importance and the role of ephemeras as well as published, multiplied works in contemporary art. In this regard, mfc-michèle didier introduces in November 2013 a new project of programming: mfc 2. mfc 2 is based on the principle of the invitation, which works on a double protocol: - Guest 1 = x1 has «carte blanche» to invest the space of the first room or the second room of the gallery, both if necessary. There is mainly one constraint, which is to echo, through the proposed project, the questions related to the artist s book, printed works and / or multiplied art works. x1 will be an artist most of the time, but can also be curator, historian, writer, critic, journalist, film director, people with multiple voices or multiple voices in a group. - Guest 2 = x2 receives a mission, which is to take over mfc-michèle didier s publications catalogue, to interpret it and reveal it in a new way. x2 will be a designer, an architect, a scenographer or may also be an artist. mfc-michèle didier s goal is here to contextualize the publisher s productions, which will take place in a space imagined by people who are familiar with enclosed volumes, such as the private sphere. For two years, mfc-michèle didier has been unfolding the artists books on the walls of the gallery, why not propose this time a more intimate and furnished approach? Why not close the book that was previously opened? - x1 and x2 may sometimes share or exchange their respective qualities. - x1 et x2 may merge. «The gallery space quotes the tableaux and makes them art.» writes Brian O Doherty in his famous text Inside the White Cube. The Ideology of the Gallery Space published in a series of articles published in Artforum from 1976. mfc 2 cares about this question initiated by the presentation of art - in this case, for mfc-michèle didier it s often the artist s book - in this «unshadowed, white, clean, artificial» space that s the art gallery, as we all know, but that can also be the book. The gallery-space is here invested by x1 - by entrusting the place to someone else, mfc-michèle didier renews the interpretation of the space and questions at the same time the notion of its own identity and recognition. The book-space is here in the hands of x2 - mfc-michèle didier proposes thus a new relationship between the space of the gallery and the space of the book, and even more through gesture of the guest - the gallery as a gesture 1. 1 Fourth essay of Inside the White Cube published in Artforum in 1981. 2 3
La Serre is x1 The bookshop La Serre was conceived in 2012 upon the initiative of four Paris fine arts students, based on the following observation: artists produce on their own quality books that they have a hard time distributing or placing on display. So they imagined La Serre (literally «The Glasshouse»), a mobile and lightweight architectural structure, totally transparent, able to flourish as quickly as a mushroom. Upon mfc-michèle didier s invitation, La Serre will settle up for the winter at 66 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth in Paris during a month and a half. La Serre will display a selection of its fund, which will evolve in the course of the exhibition. The gallery will also invite five of La Serre s displayed artists to extend the content of their publications in the space-time framed by the exhibition in a gallery: Franziska Kabisch, Soufiane Ababri, aalliicceelleessccaanne&sso onniiaaddeerrzzyyppoollsskkii, Tania Gheerbrandt and Louise Siffert. The term of the exhibition has been established according to a cycle during which the interventions will co-exist and get activated one after the other. There will be five performances, performed lectures, activations, readings, starting from one or more art works, that have been previously published, printed or simply projected. 4 5
La Ville Rayée is x2 La Ville Rayée is a group of three architects, David Apheceix, Benjamin Lafore and Sébastien Martinez Barat, who began working together in 2006. Investigating architecture as a comprehensive discipline implicating a spectrum of interdisciplinary production of multiples, the works created by La Ville Rayée can be situated at the point of convergence between theoretical and pragmatic encounters. A series of mfc-michèle Didier publications have been selected to be placed on two of their creations: sanstitres et Adventures Close to Home. Adventures Close to Home* is a series of monofunctional tables in ash, which provide space for the placement of a single object at a time, their structure functions as a domestic totem. These objects confront the multipurpose nature of architectural motifs. The sanstitres** are cumbersome objects made of white Styrofoam. Their indecipherable status suspends the object within a realm between a drawing and the material itself. These manufactured lines have no specific use value, they adopt an opportunity to become thresholds for various objects, as nondescript props which classify the space that surrounds them, dispensable objects. The artist s books selected for this installation resonate with investigations of the emergence of form through various protocols: the superposition of time, page after page, in the two volumes One Million Years by On Kawara; the recurrent triangle drawn in the landscape of Inside a Triangle by Claude Closky; the establishment of a repertoire of 31 billion forms contained in Allan McCollum s Book of Shapes; or the superposition of translucent sheets, creating a mirror and revealing the portrait of the specator in life and works by AA Bronson. Selected Works: AA Bronson, life and works Claude Closky, Inside a triangle On Kawara, One Million Years Allan McCollum, The Book of Shapes * Courtesy La Ville Rayée and Gallery Bensimon, 2010. **Courtesy La Ville Rayée and Glassbox, 2013. 6
FOR ANY FURTHER INFORMATION OR IMAGE REQUEST PLEASE CONTACT US info@micheledidier.com +33 (0)1 71 97 49 13 mfc-michèle didier 66 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth 75003 PARIS - FRANCE www.micheledidier.com Open from Tuesday to Saturday from 12 am to 7 pm Subway: République, Strasbourg Saint-Denis, Arts et Métiers 8