Installation views of Perrotin's booth at Art Basel, 2022. Photo : Claire Dorn. ©2022 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. © Anna-Eva Bergman, Jean-Michel Othoniel / ADAGP, Paris 2022. Courtesy of all artists and Perrotin.
Installation views of Perrotin's booth at Art Basel, 2022. Photo : Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.
Installation views of Perrotin's booth at Art Basel, 2022. Photo : Claire Dorn. © Bernard Frize, Gérard Schneider / ADAGP, Paris 2022. Courtesy of all artists, Perrotin and galerie Diane de Polignac.
Installation views of Perrotin's booth at Art Basel, 2022. Photo : Claire Dorn. © Yves Laloy / ADAGP, Paris 2022. Courtesy of all artists and Perrotin.
Installation views of Perrotin's booth at Art Basel, 2022. Photo : Claire Dorn. © Xavier Veilhan / ADAGP, Paris 2022. ©2022 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of all artists and Perrotin.
Installation views of Perrotin's booth at Art Basel, 2022. Photo : Claire Dorn. © Hans Hartung / ADAGP, Paris 2022. Courtesy of the artist, Hartung-Bergman Foundation and Perrotin.
Installation views of Perrotin's booth at Art Basel, 2022. Photo : Claire Dorn. © Johan Creten / ADAGP, Paris 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.
Installation views of Perrotin's booth at Art Basel, 2022. Photo : Claire Dorn. ©2022 Emi Kuraya/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy Perrotin.
ART BASEL

BOOTH L25

June 14 - 19, 2022


For this new edition of Art Basel, Perrotin is pleased to participate with solo presentations by artists Jean-Marie Appriou, Johan Creten, Emi Kuraya, Hans Hartung and Lee Bae alongside new NFT paintings by Takashi Murakami. On this occasion, we also introduce our representation of the French painter Gérard Schneider’s estate with paintings from the 50's and the 70s.


Jean-Marie Appriou presents Communionem Elementaris, a new series of bronze, aluminum and glass sculptures. Inspired by painter Arnold Böcklin, these figures of sea creatures and fish highlight the symbiotic connection between earth, air and water. Starting June 25, the artist will unveil another new series of sculptures in the gardens of the Villa Medici in Rome.


We are also pleased to present a selection of drawings by Hans Hartung made between 1935 and 1938, a period that was both the hardest for Hartung, who had fled Nazi Germany, and imperative in the blossoming of his fame. These works on paper come from the Hartung- Bergman Foundation and constitute an exceptional ensemble of works that do not exist anywhere else on the market, including in institutions and private collections.


Other new works include sculptures by Johan Creten from the Odore di Femmina series, alongside abstract mural sculptures covered with lava glaze and recent bronzes from the complex, politically-charged work C’est dans ma nature (It’s in my nature).


We also feature brand new paintings by Emi Kuraya following her solo presentation at Perrotin Shanghai earlier this year.


Later during the fair, we will present Lee Bae’s latest series Brushstroke and Issu du feu (White lines) recently shown at the gallery in Paris.


In addition, we present a selection of recent works by Daniel Arsham, Cristina BanBan, Sophie Calle, Gabriel de la Mora, Mathilde Denize, Elmgreen & Dragset, Lionel Estève, Chen Fei, Bernard Frize, Laurent Grasso, Zach Harris, Thilo Heinzmann, JR, Bharti Kher, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Paola Pivi, Park Seo-Bo, Tavares Strachan, Xavier Veilhan, Pieter Vermeersch and Xiyao Wang who has currently her first solo exhibition at Perrotin Marais.


Our booth also features a selection of works by Anna-Eva Bergman, Alain Jacquet, Georges Mathieu and Jesús Rafael Soto.

JEAN-MARIE APPRIOU


For Art Basel, Jean-Marie Appriou set out to create an experience: a universe full of marine animals inspired by Saint Anthony Preaching to the Fish by Basel painter Arnold Böcklin.

The artist wants to highlight the symbiotic link between living beings – aquatic and terrestrial – but also between the elements “air” and “water”, which the artist uses to create an invisible decor from which the marine animals and fish emerge.

Jean-Marie Appriou’s project enters into dialogue with Böcklin’s work, like a returning wave, a rising tide in which the marine fauna finally has its say. The artist eulogizes the power of the still-mysterious aquatic universe. In Appriou’s work, water is a symbol of passage, a portal to a higher state of consciousness.

The sea creatures emerge from the depths of an imaginary sea, not to listen to a monastic sermon, but to meet the spectators, to make them aware of their similarities, of the analogy and correlation of their existences. When asked about this vision made material, Jean-Marie Appriou insists that “we all come from the sea: marine mammals and fish impel us to explore our own genealogy, even beyond living beings, when, in time immemorial, the primordial earth was still a liquid magma of metals and minerals, and glass rained on lakes of molten iron.”

JOHAN CRETEN


On the occasion of Art Basel, Johan Creten presents two new sculptures of the emblematic and poetic series entitled Odore di Femmina. The work is inspired by Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, it embraces seduction and subversion while highlighting the complexity of human relationships.

This stoneware and earthenware piece was made and fired at La Borne, France, in an Anagma oven with a long firing process (6 days).

“On Creten’s torsos covered in roses, odor becomes a distant reference; a sensation alluded to by metonymy, displacement and substitution.

The warm fragrance of flowers becomes the metallic sheen of ceramics; the enveloping wash of their perfume is suggested by the organic undulations of the day petals. Odor is absent from his work, but Johan Creten reconstructs it through a delicate and malevolent play on associations […]. Creten is attracted by the subtle, etheral power of odors, but he also delights in the physical pleasure of submerging his hands in clay and shaping it into sculpture. He likes the potential of uncertainty during the firing process which will affect the color of his pieces. He adores those masses without heads, hands or feet; they are nothing but bodies covered with flowers. He exploits all the connotations of sensual liberation concealed by the word “body” by building a solid block, a capsule of flesh, sensations and odors. His works are fragile and heavy, appearing delicate but yet potentially injurious if one attempts to hug them. They are exactly like the way one breathes, like life which draws us towards others or drives us away from them, like the undefinable sensation of an aroma which allows an approach or enjoins a departure. They urge an uncharted journey through the significance of feelings.”

– Rosa Martinez

Johan Creten will also present two gilded bronze taken from the complex, political and socially engaged work C’est dans ma nature (It’s in my nature) from 2001.

This long frieze seems to be cut into 5 sessions, 5 scenes, 5 moments - like fragments of a story. Reminiscent of the great historical friezes, this high relief in gilded bronze slowly reveals its purpose: a scene of conflict, encounter, recognition, reconciliation or resistance.

Johan Creten returns to the theme of insects, bees, wasps, etc... as a metaphor for the changing social organization.

The book La Vie des Abeilles by Maurice Maeterlinck or the «Bees» of the Barberini come to mind.

These reliefs are part of the long history of narrative sculptures such as the Trajan column, the Vendôme column or the pieces by Daumier, Rodin or Fontana.

The gilding is of a very high quality, and the finesse of the casting is exemplary.

Visually, the gilding makes it almost impossible to read the image - is this a metaphor for the impossible utopia?

GÉRARD SCHNEIDER


Perrotin is pleased to announce the representation of the Estate of French artist Gérard Schneider (1896-1986), in collaboration with Galerie Diane de Polignac.

To mark the occasion, paintings of his works from the 1950s and the 1970s are presented at Art Basel.

The artist will also feature in a solo presentation at the Independent 20th Century fair in New York in September.

A major retrospective will be held in October 2022 at Perrotin Matignon, bringing together nearly thirty works that cover the painter’s entire career, from the 1940s to the end of his life in 1986.

In conjunction with this exhibition, Galerie Diane de Polignac will show a group of works by the painter. On this occasion, Gérard Schneider’s digital and evolving catalogue raisonné will be released.

Pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, along Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages and Georges Mathieu, Gérard Schneider is a leading figure of this new, utterly free, gestural abstraction, which emerges in Post-War Paris. Born in Sainte-Croix in Switzerland in 1896, he studied at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, and then at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris before settling permanently in Paris. In the mid- 1930s, Gérard Schneider assimilated the revolution initiated by Kandinsky’s abstraction, while also exploring the new horizons introduced by Surrealism. He wrote poems and frequented the Surrealists. In the effervescence of the immediate post-war period, Gérard Schneider’s art played a pioneering role in the birth of a new form of abstraction: Lyrical Abstraction.

Alongside artists such as Georges Mathieu, Hans Hartung or Pierre Soulages - with whom he formed sincere friendships - Gérard Schneider very quickly saw his work acquire an international dimension. From the mid- 1940s, major exhibitions grouping the main members of Lyrical Abstraction were organized in Paris, Germany and the United States, especially during the major travelling exhibitions Advancing French Art that was shown all over the country (SFMOMA in San Francisco, The Phillips Collection in Washington, The Art Institute of Chicago among others).


During the 1950’s and the 1960’s, his work continues to travel: first retrospective in 1953 in Brussels, then a second one in 1962 in association with the Düsseldorf Kunstverein, Documenta in Kassel in 1955 and 1959, Venice Biennale in 1948, 1954 and 1966, International Exposition of Art in Japan, São Paulo Biennale: in 1951, 1953 and 1961, exhibitions in Italy with Bruno Lorenzelli gallery and a major retrospective at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna in Turin in 1970…


Gérard Schneider painted until the end of his life, he died in 1986 at the age of 90. In 1998, Michel Ragon published a major monograph on his work. In 2022, the Catalogue Raisonné of Gérard Schneider’s paintings will be launched.

HANS HARTUNG


These works on paper come from the Hartung-Bergman Foundation and constitute an exceptional ensemble of works that do not exist anywhere else on the market, neither in institutions nor in private collections. From this period, only 26 pieces are preserved in institutions - essentially paintings in the Centre Pompidou, Paris.


These drawings were made between 1935 and 1938, a period that was both the hardest for Hartung, who had fled Nazi Germany, and imperative in the blossoming of his fame, thanks to his unclassifiable paintings that seem to anticipate Cy Twombly’s work from the 1970s.

Thanks to his friends Christian Zervos and Will Grohmann, Hartung went into exile in France. He tried to build up a network there, to show his work and to immerse himself in a city that was the world capital of the avantgarde. Between 1936 and 1939, he began to enjoy some recognition. Gallerists, collectors and peers admired his abstraction, which was spontaneous and strange, completely detached from any theoretical aim, and opposed to the Surrealist canons. In 1926, influential critic Herta Wescher wrote in the prestigious English magazine Axis: “Driven by a strong need for externalization, Hans Hartung finds endless possibilities in the form of the line. He conscientiously refrains from following any rules, aesthetics or laws of composition, content with translating his thoughts, sometimes controlled and fixed later.”


Hartung lived in rough conditions. While he was supported by influential artists of the period - Kandinsky, Calder, Miro, Jean Hélion and Pierre Loeb - and began to integrate his work into collections that would soon become historic, the Gallatin and Peggy Guggenheim collections, he still fought to have even enough to eat. His struggle explains the modesty of his formats, in which he put all his energy, all his anxieties (he was diagnosed as a «neuropath» by Sasha Nacht himself in 1937) and all his singularity. These drawings also seem to anticipate tragedies to come: soon, Hartung would enlist in the Foreign Legion against Hitler, live in hiding, in prison, and would lose a leg in combat in 1944 on the battlefield of Belfort.


Hartung would treasure his drawings from this period all his life and presented some of them in important exhibitions, including at the Craven Gallery in Paris in 1956.

EMI KURAYA


Emi Kuraya, born in 1995, is one of the most refreshing new voices in the contemporary Japanese art panorama.

Following her recent solo presentations at Perrotin Shanghai and Perrotin Seoul, the young Japanese artist in Kaikai Kiki Collective presents work that, as is her trademark, sublimates the ordinary into poetic moments.

Emi Kuraya’s delicate brushstrokes bring a lightness to her oil paintings. Emanating both familiarity and unease, the unique styles of Kuraya’s female characters create a pictorial diary of the daily observations that inform the subject matter of her work.

As the artist says: "The gap between the extraordinary, special moments and the uneventful daily life that goes on at home brings out the various lightness and darkness that have accumulated inside me. By depicting the past through the filter of the present, I am exploring such lightness and darkness."


TAKASHI MURAKAMI


Takashi Murakami presents his latest projects from the body of work Murakami.Flowers and Clone X.

A component of NFT project Murakami.Flowers, the pixelated flower paintings by Takashi Murakami combine the artist’s iconic Superflat aesthetic with the nostalgia of the graphics of 1970’s Japanese games. The series was conceived around the key number 108 associated with the Buddhist principle of bonnō, or earthly temptations; 108 backgrounds, 108 flower colors, 108 fields.

As the artist states, "The existence of Murakami.Flowers extends beyond blockchain."

Also on view is a new painting based on the Clone X NFT project developed with RTFKT Studios. For this series, Murakami translates digitally rendered figures into precise hand-painted portraits bearing the artist’s distinctive motifs. By translating NFT avatars into physical artworks, Murakami strengthens his interest in metaverse artworks, a part of the artist’s long-standing quest for the democratization of art.

"Twenty-five years or so ago, affordable contemporary art merchandise and edition works were not as readily available in the art world as they are today," the artist recalls. After the success of the sale of his posters by Emmanuel Perrotin in 2001, Murakami began dedicating part of his artistic energy towards creating works that are more accessible for a wider audience.

"I think the concept of NFT art exists where the democratization of the art market is thoroughly expanded... So I think it was inevitable for me to enter the NFT world."


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