The Hidden World
Jim Shaw / Didactic Art Collection
Exhibition extended until January 26, 2014
Chalet Society
14 Boulevard Raspail
75007 Paris
Hours: Thursday–Sunday noon–8pm
“Jim Shaw has the most amazing collection of cultural oddities that I have ever seen.”
–Mike Kelley
“Jim’s show is like peeking deep inside his wacky, delightfully twisted mind to discover where he gets his inspirations. As a fellow twisted artist, I found it greatly inspiring.”
–Cindy Sherman
“The artist has created a breathtaking and expansive journey through the myths and beliefs of America.”
–Maaike Lauwaert, Artforum
“Shaw is a self-described “visual addict” who has been collecting the vernacular detritus of American culture. As a collective cultural history, the source material is both surprising and intriguing (..), a schizoid vision of America, somewhere between dream and nightmare.”
–Timothée Chaillou, Flash Art
Jim Shaw is exhibiting his personal archives featuring a mind-blowing iconography that has influenced generations of artists. Visitors are invited to dive into an overflowing world of illustrations, books, comics, flyers, T-shirts, vinyls produced for religious movements, political propaganda or scientific popularization. Collected by the artist over the past 40 years, this prolific didactic material reveals a vibrant mix of visual language and the most hallucinating records of contemporary imaginary.
The catalogue designed by the artists collective The Bells Angels will be published in collaboration with the Centre Dürrenmatt in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, that will host the exhibition in 2014.
The Chalet Society is a project founded by Marc-Olivier Wahler, designed to encourage new reflection on the contemporary art institution. Its mobile structure endeavours to develop formats that work on a variety of platforms, similarly to software capable of working with any hardware. The Chalet Society reacts to the boldest artistic settings and acts as a community space for artists, collectors, researchers, and other enthusiasts searching for “poetic consciousness”—an idea developed by Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen, the visionary King of Poland for one night back in 1587.
With this carte blanche to Jim Shaw, the Chalet Society is pursuing the premise of its programming: to play with the boxes which art sometimes gets put in and test its eclecticism, its versatility and its ability to provide unexpected areas of expertise.
The Chalet Society has taken over a unique site in Paris: a 1,000-square-meter abandoned school provided by the Emerige Group, the main partner of the exhibition.
Parallel events
One Night King Club
Paying tribute to the spiritual father of the Chalet Society, and in open dialogue with Jim Shaw’s Didactic Art Collection on view, the Chalet Society invites artists to show a selection of their own collections. The cycle started with Pierre Leguillon, followed by Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux.
Special collaborations
Family Business is an initiative by Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni, with guest (ghost) curator Nadja Argyropoulou and powered by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
Responding to Marc-Olivier Wahler’s curatorial flair for tricks and treats and in conjunction with the Jim Shaw’s Hidden World, Family Business proposes Les Grands Transparents. In Practice, a special program developed for the Chalet Society.
The Volume One in December 2013 presented the artists collective Saprophytes revisiting the visual heritage of Hesiod’s Theogony.
On January 18, the Volume Two invites the research consortium ESTAR(SER) aka the “Esthetical Society for Transcendental and Applied Realization (now incorporating the Society for Esthetical Realizers”). The visiting representatives of the consortium will present “Fix Your Eyes Right Here,” a conjuring lecture/performance reanimating the eccentric stagecraft of an American original—Inyard Kip Ketchem, a vaudeville philosopher and travelling attention artist, considered in the early 20th century as “America’s Greatest Carnival Meditator” and probably associated with the mysterious Order of the Third Bird.
Out of This World. The designers of Diplomates propose a unique experience to the public: a device for experimenting with disappearence, inspired by the drafts of famous magician Robert Harbin.
Closing of the Hidden World
The closing party for Jim Shaw’s exhibition is programmed on January 26, 2014, featuring special collaborations with artists. More information soon on our website, stay tuned!
