Pierre Vadi
Plus d’une langue (More than One Tongue)
16 January–29 March 2015
Opening: Friday, 16 January, 6–9pm
Centre culturel suisse, Paris
38 rue des Francs-Bourgeois
75003 Paris
France
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 1–7pm
Free admission
T + 33 1 42 71 44 50
ccs [at] ccsparis.com
With his sculptures, installations that are almost architectural at times, and entire environments, Pierre Vadi (born in 1966, lives and works in Geneva) creates fictional spaces. For CCS, Vadi has put together an exhibition that stretches from the center’s inner courtyard to the large gallery, with on-site interventions as well as several new pieces of sculpture. Altered spaces, colored walls, plays of transparency and light, Vadi’s works trouble our perception of a place. The interactions between the sculptures—some of which play with the utilitarian look of the center’s furniture—create a sensory visit that is complex and esthetically alien, while the titles of the pieces invoke multiple linguistic and literary references, emphasizing the openness of meaning to other fields that are clearly delineated yet open.
Vadi has this to say about his show at CCS, Plus d’une langue (More than One Tongue): “In my recent work, I have tried to bring together two activities that are not mutually exclusive though rarely associated, or at least rarely articulated in the same timeframe, and they are building and speaking.
“The show postulates with greater clarity and contrast what espacer (to space things out) means, i.e., to introduce a gap or a certain space between things. The production of gaps is both visual and verbal, and the show organizes this arrangement and association. It is both the product (the artworks) and the possibility of this (the reading). It is a general and recurring principle of the exhibition, but here, and for me, things are more closely mixed. The space between the works and the titles is reduced, sometimes even reversed. The interpretative void is the space of the exhibition.
“I pay particular attention to the artworks’ surroundings. I try to construct an immersive situation in which paradoxically the objects, which are very physical and material, are placed at a distance in a kind of floating visual hesitation…I think the world is more interesting when it is complicated, because that complication stops us from thinking that we alone know the truth. It’s the surprise and power of art to be a principle of forceful affirmation and a principle of political tact.”
An outdoor artwork will be on view until the summer of 2015.
Pierre Vadi (born 1966) lives and works in Geneva. He is a graduate of ESAV in Geneva (now known as HEAD, the Geneva University of Art and Design). His solo shows have been featured in a number of venues, including the Ancien Pénitencier in Sion as part of the Triennale Valais (2014); the Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse, and Mamco in Geneva (2009); the Swiss Institute in New York, the Zoo Galerie in Nantes, and Crédac in Ivry (2008); and Spot in Le Havre (2007). He has also exhibited in group shows at the Gregor Staiger Gallery in Zurich (2014), CAN in Neuchâtel (2013), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2012), Circuit in Lausanne (2008), and Fri Art in Fribourg (2007). Pierre Vadi works with the Triple V Gallery in Paris and Ribordy Contemporary in Geneva.
The show enjoys the generous support of the Republic and Canton of Geneva and the Canton of Valais.
Also on display in the courtyard gallery:
Nicolas Party: Pastel et nu
16 January–15 February 2015
Opening: Friday, 16 January, 6–9pm
The esthetic of the compositions created by Nicolas Party (born in 1980, lives and works in Brussels) is both effective and singular. It blends a contemporary visual culture, originating in graffiti in particular, with classic subjects, still lifes and portraits painted by masters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For the courtyard gallery, Party has reinterpreted in charcoal Félix Vallotton’s Four Torsos (1916), but has done so as repeated deconstructed motifs. Colored and framed landscapes are superimposed on large nudes depicted from behind. The artist has also worked with the large door that leads to the CCS courtyard, creating a composition that combines the same picture by Vallotton and a face that is characteristic of his own style of painting.
An outdoor artwork will be on display until the summer of 2015.
Nicolas Party (born 1980) lives and works in Brussels. He is a graduate of Ecal in Lausanne and did additional art studies in Glasgow. He has had solo shows at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster and the Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway (2014); at the Swiss Institute in New York (2012); at Doll in Lausanne, Remap 3 in Athens, and the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh (2010). He has also exhibited in group shows at the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn and the Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn (2014); at the Neues Museum, Nürnberg and the Museum Folkwang, Essen (2013). He works with the Modern Institute Gallery in Glasgow and the Gregor Staiger Gallery in Zurich.
Both exhibitions have been curated by Jean-Paul Felley & Olivier Kaeser, the codirectors of CCS.
