Dear Shaded Viewers,
The highly solicited winner of the public and the 1,2,3 prize at Hyeres festival was in Paris for a few days on appointments and we met up for tea and cakes at les Deux Abeilles. Jean Paul Lespagnard thought that the deco fit well with him so he arranged a bit of a mise en scene.
Jean Paul Lespagnard at les Deux Abeilles
Shoji in his Cosmic Wonder coat and Sayoko on the terrace between the two museums.
After tea I went to meet my friends Sayoko and Shoji on the terrace between the Modern Museum and the Palais de Tokyo. While we were waiting for Shoji, Sayoko and I visited the Modern and I have to say that I hated the art so much it made me feel like a vampire had just sucked all of my blood. At least it got a reaction. When Shoji arrived we went to see SUPERDOME exhibition which will continue at the Palais de Tokyo until August 24th. The highlight of the exhibition was Daniel Firman and the amazing upside down elephant. If you are in Paris it is a must see.
Mathias Ohrel
Daniel Firman-WURSA
At a distance f 18,000 km from the earth, the elephant Wursa could balance on her trunk. It is on the basis of learned scientific calculations that Daniel Firman reached this conclusion, and came above all to produce this extraordinary work which confounds all our certainties regarding the gravitation of bodies. The life size creature’s precarious equilibrium seems to put us in danger. The hyper-realist sculpture borrows from the skills of a taxidermist which gives us the opportunity to seesaw between a proven scientific phenomenon and the real and physical putting of the world into perspective. Wursa, conjures up a Russian Sputnik and the conquest of space, is fixed in her position as if one of her acrobatic feats had been arrested by the pause button: this vision enables the artist to offer a novel physical and psychological experience.
The Shock Doctrine , to coincide with the latest book by Naomi Klein. Whether hit by the tsunami in Sri Lanka or the hurricane in New Orleans , Klein observe the same things. The victims of these catastrophes are hit a second time by an “economic shock treatment”. At the heart of disaster capitalism these disasters and other traumatic episodes have made it possible to drastically speed up the take-over of the planet by the many adherents of ultraliberalism.
At the same time as the Palais du Tokyo exhibitions the Parcours in Saint Germain des Pres was going on and the highlight was a visit to the l‘Hotel, famous for being the resting place of Oscar Wilde. Gaspard Yurkievich was the first designer ever to be invited to exhibit his work there. With the leopard carpets and the old world charm, l’Hotel was a perfect match. Unfortunately my pics are out of focus , should have used a flash but you can get the general idea. Gaspard has been designing shoes since he was a child and can come up with 100 ideas over night. Here are a few surrounding the bed. Meanwhile an excellent and very sensual film was being screened. It will end up, no doubt, at You Wear it Well 3 and be screened at the Jeu de Paume 26, 27 and 28th of September when we launch the next edition of You Wear it Well.
Before leaving l’Hotel we went to visit their swimming pool.
Later,
Diane
The neon behind me was created by Daniel Firman for the Lacroix exhibition at the 2007 festival d’Hyeres.
