Post Patman
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Yesterday i went to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris to check out the new exhibition, "Nouvelles du Monde Renvers� ("News from the Upside-down World�?), and remembered why i worship this place so much. The first room i entered was filled with Michel Blazy's Post Patman installation. The smell that attacks the nostrils as you step inside the space indicates that the artist is into the organic, the perishable, the mould-making. There's first the striking Patman which was already featured in the previous exhibition 5'000'000'000 Years. This kind of big atomic mushroom is made of 91 kilos of soy noodles.
Right in front of Patman, there are chickens made of chocolate, they behave, they don't mutate, nor smell, they just wander about and seem to ignore visitors. The bunch of carrots quietly rotting on the floor still look pretty harmless. What jumps on your nose though is the wall painting made with mashed potatoes and beetroot purée, it is slowly flaking off, crumbling to the floor and designing what turns out to be really gorgeous patterns. I was particularly fascinated by a sculpture started a few years ago and made of halves of orange peels piled on top of each other and adorned by cobwebs. They elegantly mold away and they too look like mushrooms.
The funniest part were green trash bins filled with soap that bubble and fly onto your hair if you don't pay attention. There's also a sculpture made of cat biscuits, a monster carpet covered with caramel, living birds are feasting on mould and i apparently missed the roses made of bacon which were hanging from the ceiling maybe because i was too impressed by the sofa dipped in chocolate above our heads. There were many other pieces whose ingredients i'd rather not ask about. If you return in a month, the appearance of most of these living works will have changed, some might even have disappeared. Blazy goes to the Palais de Tokyo every week to check the evolution of his pieces and add a new work to the show. The exhibition is experienced over time and i wish i can come back to see how the pieces are sprouting and evolving. Who knows what it will look like on May 6 when Blazy's exhibition closes? Bon appetit! Images on flickr and on the PdT website. More fungi: Robot moved by a slime mould's fears; Microcosmos and Mould dress; test for magic mushrooms glows in dark. |
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Wow...just...wow. I really thought those orange peel sculptures were mushrooms when I first saw them. And I love the mashed potato idea. Literally organic art in every sense.
Very nice. Although exactly as you said, the sensation on the nose might be something to avoid, especially in summer.
i made it sound worse than it actually is. the palais has a good ventilation system so it's very bearable
why? why do you worship the palais? i'm just curious about why, someone interested in deeper reflections on the production of art would find the palais worshipable? (i'm really curious, i'm not trying to be sarcastic)
It has been my absolute dream to visit PdT ever since I saw curator Nicolas Bourriaud lecture on remix ('post') culture here in SF a few years ago. I will finally have my chance quite soon, perhaps in time to linger over a final whiff of Blazy's public decomposition.
How enthralling it is to see both the realization of these important memes in a curatorial context, as well as the praxis of 'mashing-up' re-energizing the project of social media(tions) in hyper-localized situations.
reminds me of the Peter Greenway project in Fort Asperen last year. It was called After the flood. He , among other things, flooded the bottom cellar with about 15 cm. of riverwater.(you had to wear boots to wade thru the water and see all the exhibition pieces). Lots of mould, and even life stowaways (frogs) in the exhibit. Very very impressive.
hi df,
who said i'm "interested in deeper reflections on the production of art"? certainly not me. no sarcasm here either.
i plan to write another post where i'll explain why i like the palais so much. so patience....
It looks really interesting, but are there no worries about allergies? Do they post warnings at the entry? I know folks who are deathly allergic to mold.
hi regine, thanks for the answer... touché (meaning that sentence came out badly, i don't even know what it means)... i guess what i meant is: there are some fine exhibitions and artists shown at the palais, but this is always mixed with other art and artists apparently oblivious to anything else but the immediateness and new found coolness of contemporary art. the spirit of the place itself, (like an institutional colette">http://www.colette.fr/">colette that doesn't dare to be one nor the other) promotes an ideological amnesia, an absurd race towards novelty (instead a search for inedit aesthetic discourses).
don't get me wrong in paris "we" all fall into one of this two categories: the absolute ">http://www.pulp-paris.com"> pulp goer who worships the palais and the occasional pulp goer who rolls his/her eyes at the palais (but ends up showing her work there). i just pictured you more in the second category as the first has a reputation of being comfortably numb.
sorry about this long, long comment and i look forward to your post.
I saw this a few weeks ago, not very interesting and the smell was overwhelming in areas. What was good was the exhibition tucked away in the room behind this entitled ÉTATS (faites-le vous-même) (States, Grow your own).
Very interesting... living, evolving artwork is almost like bringing art closer to nature. Great post.