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Indepth Arts News:
"TWO SHOWS: Mireille Loup, Botto e Bruno"
2008-11-08 until 2008-12-06
Galerie Magda Danysz
Paris, ,
FR France
Two shows this month at the Gallery Magda Danysz in Parisare on view from November 10 through December 6, 2008. Since its creation in 1980, the month of photography has strongly contributed to earning Paris the status of photography capital. This event is the opportunity for the Magda Danysz Gallery to present 2 solo shows : the talented photo and video artist Mireille Loup and the polyvalent italian duo Botto e Bruno. Mireille Loup's latest work for the first time, including the Night Time or Lost boys series, as well as a part of her MEM (read-only memory) project. Botto e Bruno are just back from the Château d'Eau, where they presented a giant panoramic photograph at the Printemps de Semptembre in Toulouse.
Mireille Loup's photographs are full of a certain shyness ad modesty, they show things without ever naming them. In the Nocturnes ou les garçons perdus series, she brings us into an oneiric world. Two young boys, probably lost, are wandering through a peotry-filled universe. You can find traces of Peter Pan's Neverland, but without Captain Hook, just the essence of it. Mireille Loup brushes aside the obvious suffering and invites us to take a walk amidst tales and children's dreams. The unreal light and colors add to the imaginary aspect of the photos, sometimes creating a theatrical fake cardboard set effect.
Mireille Loup's curriculum is impressive. This photographer, videographer, and writer has exposed in numerous galeries and institutions in France, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Canada and the United States. You can find her photographs in public collections such as the French National Fund for Contemporary Art. She represents the new generation of artists who manages to grasp reality and transcend it with commitment. Mireille Loup choses to talk to us about childhood and Men with catharsis and resilience.
Her photogaphs show a real setting, in which Mireille Loup casts ordinary and sometimes tragic characters, always in a poetic manner. On the contrary, her videos exorcise these ordinary tragedies with condescendence, almost with cruelty. Her words, whether they're from a novel, a tale or on an audio tape, call us, make us mad, transport us, all in an emotion only something honest can offer. For Mireille Loup gets inspired by life as it comes, she gets in touch with genuine emotions and doesn't lock herself into a simple inventory of the human condition. With her narrative photography, her sketches caught on video or her writing, she grasps our identities with great gentleness.
Paul Ardenne can give us some final insight on Mireille Loup's art : " Art for her doesn't stay still, it's agitated and stirs existence itself. As a result, it's more of an unintentional form of life. A way of resisting to existential inertia and challenging it. A resistance. "
Botto e Bruno are in Paris for their first solo show at the Magda Danysz gallery. What's impressive is this duo's versatility : they explore the realms of photomontage, drawing, collage, installations, video, theatre, and music as well.
These Italian artists grew up in Torino, and were witnesses of the spreading suburbs and the obsolescence of industrial neighborhoods. That's where their artistic work all started : they find their inspiration in empty industrial zones, with buildings in more or less advanced states of ruin, and deserted streets… They then populate them with young characters from the grunge, indie, and garage culture, highly recognizable thanks to their hoodies, records, and magazines. These suburbian protagonists, cocooned in their musical world, reassure us about the abandoned outskirts if the city. Botto e Bruno promote today's suburbia together with its culture, as they claim : "Art enables us to express doubt on the widespread cliché that suburbs are only negative places, with no possibility whatsoever of social recognition."
However, be it with video, photography, or collage, far from capturing a fleeting moment, Botto e Bruno are wary of the objectivity images may seem to foster. That's why they recreate totally original suburb landscapes, by editing, adding, superimposing, and scotch-taping. They purposely leave a tangible trace of the decomposition and remodelling they go through to obtain their final work.
In this exhibition, we can fully appreciate the diversity of the Torino artists' talents : four installations combine video, an audio tape and the matching words, and they're surrounded by an urban set, composed of their real-size photographs, genuine trompe-l'oeil that cover the gallery walls and part of the floor. More than quality plastic work and a good combination of media, Botto e Bruno's work is first and foremost a reflexion on today's urban society: "Only on the outskirts of the city can you find real life ; the problems and questions of contemporary life develop in the suburbs."
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