Exhibition from 6 June until 18 july 2009

Thomas Léon expresses his work, for the most part, through the video medium. His installations are dense and complex, and explore unromantic urban landscapes (collective housing, outlying urban zones) where synthesis images and sound effects are used to create emotional tension. His work draws upon structural film and places a great deal of importance on form and construction. Léon's installations have a reflexive dimension, questioning how the work appears (the film's duration) as much as the role of the person watching it (the time it takes to walk through the installation).

This exhibit hinges upon the work "The Time Machine" (2009), a video installation inspired by H.G. Wells' eponymous novel (1895). This writer's anticipation narrative is heavily influenced by the scientific developments and political context of his time. This novel was written while the first metros were being built and garden cities were first being imagined. His work brings a bipolar social order together with early 20th century urban planning by guessing at links between their parallel developments.

"The Time Machine" focuses on representative places (the Cité Universitaire Internationale in Paris, the underground tunnels of the metro), considered as possible settings for Wells' narrative. The installation travels through these areas, revealing the ever-present tension they house. Mixed with this ambling is a reflection upon territory and its representations in the digital age.
This installation was made possible with the help of Glassbox and the Cité Internationale as part of the "Acteurs Autonomes" program.

"Lightmaps" (2009), a series of black and white photographic prints, echoes this installation. These images are artificial representations of virtual space and the light intensity of their surface. The transposition of these values into grey levels and the way they are distributed within space of the print cause the fundamentals of photography to intersect with computer imagery and mapping.

The exhibit also showcases two videos: "High Latency" and "Exposition automatique". Both rationalized explorations of living spaces, they are built around a continuous traveling shot, through which the work unfolds like an adventure where architecture mingles with modernism. Each piece is shown on a monitor.

"The Time Machine", video installation, received support from the DRAC - Direction régionale des affaires culturelles - Île-de-France - « Grant for equipment», 2008.

Thomas Léon
Born in 1981 in Dijon, Thomas Léon currently lives and works in Paris. His work has been a part of the following shows: « Les enfants du sabbat 07 » at "le Creux de l'enfer", Center for Contemporary Art, Thiers , France in 2006, «Multipolaire » at the "Halle 14" in Leipzig, Germany in 2006, « Filterbox » at Glassbox, Paris in 2006, « Le syndrome de Broadway » at the Parc Saint-Léger Center for Art in Pougues-les-Eaux, France in 2007, « Science et fiction » at "la Générale en Manufacture", Sèvres, France in 2008. His work was broadcast as part of the "saison vidéo 2008" of the "Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid 2008" and of the "Macula" program on the "Souvenirs from earth" channel in 2009.

 

 

 

Saturday June 13, 7 pm

 

Thomas Léon and the Isabelle Gounod Gallery have the pleasure of inviting Benjamin Seror to direct the performance entitled "Le Kammerspiel de Thomas Léon" in the gallery's exhibition space on Saturday, June 13th 2009 at 7pm.
The kammerspiel is a term invented by August Strindberg to designate four short plays he wrote in the fall of 1907 to be played in a theater he imagined scaled down to the size on a turn-of-the-century middle-class interior so as to better describe the psychological tension of each character by pulling us into the very heart of their thought processes.

Chamber play theater thus becomes a theater of the mind, entrenched in the thoughts of each character. Thomas Léon's Kammerspiel is a performance built around this exhibition. Its narrative style lies somewhere between that of a lecture and an epic poem. It is about landscape to how it is captured and restituted, Hubert Robert, that which is continuous, that which is neutral and its possible intensity as explored by Roland Barthes and finally knowing whether all of this can constitute a theater of the mind.

Benjamin Seror stages installations and performances in which he uses music, more precisely song, as a critical and narrative device to begin reflecting upon ways of describing the complexity of items such as a volcano, a website, a band from the 80s or the work of other artists.
Born in 1979, he lives and works in Lyon and is currently doing postgraduate work at the ENBA Lyon.

 

Galerie Isabelle Gounod
13 rue Chapon
75003 Paris
France
+33 (0)1 48 04 04 80

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anais Martane (b. France) : BEIJING PORTRAITS
Solo Exhibition
June 20 - 10 August, 2009

 

'Portraits of Beijing' is a personal reflection on the pluralities of China; of the men and women from all walks of life who make Beijing what it is today: a city of many faces, each bearing his or her unique tale of every day existence in China's capital.

Accompanied by journalist Diane Droin-Michaud, Ms. Martane travelled widely across China during 2007 recording these faces - smiling, sad, pensive and with mixed expressions. Also on display, the text of Diane Droin-Michaud echoes each image, ever deferential to the voice of the subject, allowing viewers to slip for an instant into the dreams and observations of each protagonist.

 

 

Wang Chuan, 8 Great Sites of Beijing - 4 Ji Men Yan Shu, 300 x 120 cm, C - Print, 2008
 

Wang Chuan (b. 1967 Beijing) : 8 Great Sites of Beijing (2008/2009)
Solo Exhibition
Jun 20 - 10 Aug, 2009

'8 Great Sites of Beijing' is the 1st solo-show at Pékin Fine Arts for Wang Chuan, head of the photography department of Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts.. The exhibit centers on 8 historic sites of Beijing, each depicted in one panoramic landscape color photo shot, revealing real places stripped of nostalgia or historical reference.

Using digital pixel-comprised imagery, Wang digs beneath the surface of the subject photo, unearthing the fundamental "compressed" features of Beijing. The pixilated images reveal traces of history amidst Beijing's policy of unbridled construction to achieve a more "civilized" city.

 

  

WassinkLundgren (b. Holland) : Empty Bottles
Solo Exhibition
Jun 20 - 10 Aug, 2009

 

'Empty Bottles' 2005, WassinkLundgren, winner of the 2007 Arles Contemporary Book Award, is a collaboration between two young Dutch artists working with photography, Groot Wassink (b. 1981 The Netherlands) and Ruben Lundgren (b. 1983 The Netherlands). 'Empty Bottles' comprises portraits of '24 scavengers attracted by the bottles we put in front of the camera'. The project captures real-life acts of recycling, largely unnoticed, yet integral to contemporary life in China. Wassink Lundgren currently live, work and study in both London and Beijing. Initially done as a photo book project, each 'empty bottle' portrait is presented as diptych alongside a blank institutional blue-green page of the same size, in homage to the color used in public municipal space around China.

 

Pékin Fine Arts
No. 241 Cao Chang Di Village
Cui Ge Zhuang, Chao Yang District
Beijing
+86 10 5127 3220

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hiroshi Watanabe
"Ideology in Paradise"

6 June - 22 Aug 2009

The Kopeikin Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Japanese born and Los Angeles based photographer Hiroshi Watanabe titled "Ideology in Paradise" which is also the title of Watanabe's recently published book. Widely exhibited internationally, this is Watanabe's first solo exhibition at the gallery.

Although his past work has been exclusively in black and white, the artist uses color in this project to explore his fascination with North Korea and attempts to tell the viewer an unbiased story of their culture and everyday life. From 2006 - 2007 Watanabe made trips to North Korea to investigate the myths that were spoken as fact in his native Japan. North Korea was described only as a country that kidnapped Japanese, allowed police to brutalize their citizens, and left the poor to die of starvation on the streets.

Unconvinced by this one-sided perspective of North Koreans he wanted to investigate for himself. During his time in North Korea, he let curiosity guide him and allowed the process to unfold organically without imposing any agenda. These images are rich in both content and aesthetics, giving the viewer a window into a moment in time, captured with a genuine respect that is visible throughout the series.

- Aperture's Lesley Martin

Hiroshi Watanabe lives and works in Los Angeles and holds a degree from Nihon University, Japan. He has published eight books of his work and he is in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, The George Eastman House, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among others. Watanabe's recent accomplishments include the Hearst 8 x 10 Biennial Award, the Center Project Competition First Prize, and the Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award.

Hiroshi Watanabe was born in Sapporo, Japan. He graduated from Department of Photography, College of Art, at Nihon University in 1975. He moved to Los Angeles after graduation and became involved in the production of TV commercials, eventually working as a producer. He later established his own production company and produced numerous commercials. He received an MBA degree from UCLA Business School in 1993. In 1995 his passion for photography rekindled, and since then he has traveled worldwide extensively, photographing what he finds intriguing at that moment and place. In 2000 he closed the production company in order to devote himself entirely to the art and became a full time photographer.

His work has been published around the world, and has been exhibited in many galleries across the United States and Japan..

The Kopeikin Gallery
8810 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood
Los Angeles, CA 90069
+1 (310) 385-5894

 

 

 

 

 

Opening: June 20th, 2009 / 19:00 Uhr
June 20 to July 31, 2009

Dada Post is proud to present photographer and video artist Lea Golda Holterman's first solo exhibition in Berlin, entitled Orthodox Eros. Born in 1976 in Haifa, Israël, Holterman creates photographs that lure and provoke the viewer through a unique layering of religious, historical, and artistic content.

Orthodox Eros explores the themes of Judaism and men's sexuality. Holterman's sensitive and skillful photographs of the clothing and rituals that lead Orthodox Jewish boys from baby into child and manhood make strong references to art history, from XVth century Dutch painting to the work of Jonathan Singer Sargent. This results in a defamiliarization of the Jewish man's image and invites the viewer into the sensual Jewish world.

According to orthodox Jewish religion, the body is the temple for one's soul. The body, and one's relationship to it, thus bears an essential social subtext.

Orthodox Eros addresses the notion of the Jew as the "other" in an erotic sense and the ways in which holiness and sexuality complete each other in this subtext. The sensuality of Jewish spiritual practice is revealed through the body's expression.

Orthodox Eros also features an installation of Holterman's videos, offering a more narrative perspective on the matter, with interviews of her subjects on topics pertaining to their portraits, their religion, and sexuality. These videos offer intimate and revealing insights about the men she has chosen to portray and their relationship to their faith, to their bodies, and even more intriguingly, to the artist herself.

Dada Post
Nordbahnstrasse 10
13409 Berlin - Reinkendorf
Berlin
+49 030-510 6 0224

 

 

 

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