Alec Soth
The Space Between Us
Valérie Mréjen
La place de la concorde
Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain
25 / 24
April 15 – June 15, 2008
The Jeu de Paume is pleased to present three springtime exhibitions by the artists Alec Soth, Valérie Mréjen, Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain — April 15 – June 15, 2008.
Alec Soth: the Space Between Us
Alec Soth is a Minneapolis-based photographer born in 1969 and a Magnum Nominee since 2004. “The Space Between Us” refers to his idea of portrait: “If the photograph represents something, it’s the space between me and the subject.”
This exhibition features a selection of three of his best-known series:
— “Sleeping by the Mississippi” is the fruit of seven trips by van along the banks of “the third coast of the United States.” These large-format colour photographs –landscapes, interiors, portraits, objects and personal souvenirs– present eclectic images of an initiatory journey.
– “Niagara” is a complex ensemble juxtaposing images of the famous falls with those of lovers, love letters and even rubbish. Alec Soth investigated love, desire and its aftermath and tried to build his own
metaphoric “Niagara”.
– It will be completed by a series of photographs that Alec Soth took in Bogotá, where he and his wife adopted their little girl. He made “Dog Days, Bogotá” for the child, drawing beauty out of a world of crumbling buildings, animals and humanity.
Exhibition supported by La Manufacture Jaeger-LeCoultre and Olympus France in partnership with À Nous Paris, Blast and FIP.
Copyright: Alec Soth / Magnum Photos
Valérie Mréjen: la place de la concorde
Ranging across literature, cinema and video, Valérie Mréjen sketches out a lucid and unforgiving picture of the mechanics of human relations, haunted as these are by misunderstandings and commonplaces.
“La place de la concorde” is Mréjen’s first solo exhibition in an institution. Its title refers both to the location of the Jeu de Paume on the famous Parisian square, and by antithesis, to the discord and unease that run through many of her pieces. This show features a dozen of her earliest videos along with recent works and four videos made especially for the occasion, plus an installation entitled Je ne supporte pas, based on the answers given to her question: “What are the things you can’t bear?”
Exhibition organized in partnership with À Nous Paris, Blast, FIP, Télérama
Copyright: ADAGP, Paris, 2008
Courtesy galerie serge le borgne, Paris
Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain: 25 / 24
The third show is devoted to the French-based Brazilian artists Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, born respectively 1973 and 1974. They make installations, built around a dialogue between texts and images, videos and drawings.
Influenced by semiology, their works subtly draw on the world of designer graphics and communication. They create new typographic styles by substituting forms taken from daily life for the letters of traditional alphabets. These forms are then staged in the exhibition spaces, giving to this writing a surprising materiality.
In this exhibition conceived for the Jeu de Paume, the artists analyse the mechanism of time, which is manipulated and related to human actions in an installation that invites the spectators to read the world from different geographical and political points of view.
Exhibition supported by the Fondation nationale des arts graphiques et plastiques, in partnership with Art Press and Oui FM
Courtesy Galerie Martine Aboucaya, Paris
Jeu de Paume receives a subsidy from the Ministry of Culture and Communication.
It gratefully acknowledges support from Neuflize Vie, its global partner.
Jeu de Paume – Concorde
1, place de la Concorde
75008 Paris
France
Informations: +33 (0)1 47 03 12 50
Tuesday (late opening): noon – 9 pm
Wednesday to Friday: noon -7 pm
Saturday and Sunday: 10 am -7 pm