9 Sept 2009 to 24 Oct 2009
Tue - Sat 11-6PM
Opening Wednesday September 9th, 2009 7-10pm
Francois Ghebaly (Chung King Project)
510 Bernard Street
CA 90012
Los Angeles, CA
California
North America
p: +1 323 691 9133
m:
f:
w: www.chungkingproject.com
Francois Ghebaly� new space in Chinatown opening with Ne�l Beloufa
Main Gallery: NE�L BELOUFA: TECTONIC PLATES OR THE JURISDICTION OF SHAPES
9th September � 24th October 2009 Opening Reception, Wednesday September 9th, 2009 from 7pm to 10 pm
For his first exhibition in his new gallery space at 510 Bernard Street in Chinatown, Los Angeles, Francois Ghebaly is pleased to announce solo debut on the San Andreas Fault. This Franco-Algerian artist was born in 1985 and currently lives and works in Paris.
Three Anecdotes: �Algeria, 1992: a political religious organization called FIS (Front Islamic du Salut) is about to win the presidential elections with a simple slogan: �A vote for the FIS, is a vote for God�. The military and the government cancelled the elections. Two years prior to this, in 1990, during a FIS political meeting the word �Allah� appeared in the sky in front of an astonished crowd of 12,000 persons. It was taken as a sign that God was on the FIS side.�Observers said that this occurrence was a simple trick made by lasers, a basic artifice in nightclubs and sci-fi movies. In order to uncover this deception, the government organized a laser show soon after in Algiers� port, which was then simply taken for what it was: a laser show.�
�When Superman puts on his glasses, no one recognizes him as Clark Kent, though it is obvious that he is the same man. The time of this fiction, spectators agree to believe that Lois Lane does not recognize him, when, perhaps, she is faking it.�
�The Holy Shroud was recognized as a fake by the Christian authorities in the 14th century. While exhibited, it had to be stated out loud that it was not an authentic relic of Christ. Centuries of conservation work slowly gave this artifice its official status as a divine object. In the 1990s and with the discovery of carbon dating, the Catholic Church decided to withhold its judgment on the actual authenticity of the object, stating that, authentic or fake, it had no incidence to the Christian faith.�
For this exhibition Ne�l Beloufa will be proposing a site-specific, California oriented installation incorporating a number of works that employ tectonics as a formal pretext to produce a new body of work. Interested in the unstable status of an object�s meaning in various configurations and contexts, Beloufa unabashedly pieces together functional shelves, fans and furniture with projected documentation of a tectonic model, green-screen sculptures made to camouflage aspects of the space and a hypnotic sci-fi documentary shot in Mali. Ne�l Beloufa�s works exist in a world that parallels our own and delights in it, where the incidental surfaces as the subject, and where these subjects are as likely to meet as two submarines or two satellites�
Ne�l Beloufa recently had solo exhibitions at Galerie LHK in Paris (curated by Gael Charbau) and Whitebox in New York (curated by Jarette Gregory). Other exhibitions and screenings include: Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; The Soap Factory, Minneapolis; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; 12th Biennale of Moving Images, Geneva; Dumbo Art Center, Brooklyn; Center of Contemporary Arts, Tel-Aviv; National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow and the International Triennial of Contemporary Art, Prague. His films have won awards at the Ann Harbor Film Festival and the International Kurzfilmtage, Oberhausen, Germany. Kempinski will also be screened at the New York Film festival next October.
PROJECT SPACE: Philip Loersch
Another US debut, Philip Loersch will present a new piece specially commissioned for the project space. Living and working in Berlin, Loersch recently had solo exhibition at Open Space, Cologne, Jette Rudolphe, Berlin and Ursula Wahlbrol in Dusseldorf.
