Paola Pivi
You gotta be kidding me
Exhibition 29 june / 26 august 2007
Production You gotta be kidding me
2007
Steel and rhinestones
14.70 x 6.7 x 0.25 meters
Production la criée Center for Contemporary Art
and galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, Miami.
Born in 1971 in Italy, the artist Paola Pivi lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska. Her presence on the international scene since 1995 has been prolific and her pluridisciplinary practice is rooted in an art of reversal:
–One hundred Chinese people dressed alike and packed into a small room;
–A helicopter upside down on its propeller in the middle of a public square;
–The photograph of a donkey standing in a boat;
–An installation in which a myriad of needles suspended in a magnetic field react to the presence of visitors
The artist creates devices and actions that are less the result of observation of a situation than of openness to spaces where paradoxes such as lightness and gravity, softness and violence come into being.
For la criée Center of Contemporary Art, Paola Pivi has created a surprising installation made up of a vast structure that reaches from floor to ceiling in the main exhibition room. The ensemble is made up of a grid structure completely covered in multicolored jewel-like crystals. This grid structure is punctuated by abstract modules in suspension that evoke water droplets.
On entering into the exhibition space, the visitor finds him/herself confronted with this monumental work that oscillates between the flat surface of painting and the volume of sculpture. Beyond these identifications, the work involves voluntarily contradictory and paradoxical perceptions:
–The simplicity and lightness of the work contradicts the monumentality of the installation;
–After the visual seduction of the multicolored beads, a threatening impression is brought on by the grid forming a wall.
–Oddly, the colored space contains a charge of shadow and sadness;
–The brash superficiality of the installation contrasts with a latent feeling of muted violence.
As is often the case in Paola Pivis exhibitions, narration is not straightforward here. The first impression of surprise gives way to an analysis that leads the viewer into an atypical, absurd, bizarre and extravagant world.
The artist likes to create improbable situations, to be experienced and experimented with.
Anything becomes possible.
la criée centre for contemporary art
place Honoré Commeurec halles centrales
35000 Rennes France
Subway stop: République
tel.: ( 33) (0)2 23 62 25 10
fax ( 33) (0)2 23 62 25 19
la-criee@ville-rennes.fr
Admission free
Tuesday to Friday from 12:00 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday from 2:00 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Closed on Mondays and public holidays.
