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Apartments in Paris

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Tania Mouraud: Martin Luther King speeches, nails and brass rings, violins, accordions, and computer generated sounds: an ode to music.

Emily Harvey: a life in fluxus.

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America it seems, is holding vast quantities of Codeine, Tiger Balm, Tylenol, Preparation H, Chanel No. 5, and Vaseline.

Fear and painting in America: flagging multiculturalism.

Jeremy Stigter's Japanese landscapes: an empire of emptiness.

Strange money: Peggy Preheim makes a buck.

The lonely contents of a strange world are undeniably ours: Caterina Verde in Eindhoven.

"This coming together between video, photography and paint involves the environment and myself. The video footage acts like a paintbrush" says Valentina Loi.

[Warhol Factory hand] Billy Name once said of Ray Johnson that he "wasn't a person, he was a collage, a sculpture."

Exacting images of people in the celebrated and banal act of wearing clothes. Could this be you? James Startt focuses on Uniforms.

On a sun-bleached rooftop a stone’s throw from the Villa Borghese in Rome, romantic minimalist Livia Signorini unfurls a “quilt” made of Horvath candy wrappers.

Painting is either back, or, never left the building. A discussion around the state of art today.

Did Picabia prefigure our current
human-technology questions?

MADE IN JAPAN: KILLER CUTENESS INVADES PARIS

"What I do is not really art, not really furniture," chairs from the throne to the unsitable.

Michael Mandiberg is selling everything. Everything is art, everything is for sale

"...Images of the Towers being struck and then falling in a plume of smoke." One illusion of Heaven against other illusions of Heaven. Fought to the death?"

A letter from Paris, from Basel. Art 32 Basel reviewed.

Swiss artist thomas hirschorn, in association with the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Jean-Noel Laszlo: liberty is still controversial.

Jonathan Horowitz's interactive low- technology web enabled art show reviewed.

part 1 Art, Paris, porn and the web.

part 2
Looks at art and porn in the context of still imagery and film.

part 3 asks: is sex in art cultural satisfaction?

letter from paris : : matthew rose

the unexplained explained… sort of…
Jonathan Horowitz at Yvon Lambert 24 March - 5 May 2001.14.04 Yvon Lambert 108, rue Vieille-du-Temple, 75003 Paris, France Tel: + 33 1 42 71 09 33 e-mail: galerie.yvon.lambert@wanadoo.fr

Jonathan Horowitz wants you to name his cat…among other things. In his a media-plied exhibition at Yvon Lambert, Horowitz, a New York based artist, mixes the silly and the banal in an attempt to locate the hierarchical dopiness of culture. Using lo-tech computer and video methods, Horowitz simply goes about describing desire, whether it is to map out Julia Roberts' career as illustrated by the actors she's starred with (and her relative position in the credits) to a crude video of a golf ball in flight on one monitor and a kitch golfing trophy on another. When will it come down? One watches both (as one watches the credits roll) and the reward is your anticipation. No calories in that.
Horowitz, who recently in New York's Greene Naftali Gallery showed on a circular bank of seven video monitors with the "highlights" of his life (The Jonathan Horowitz Show). Each monitor spins out a montage of tv clips such as the Mary Tyler Moore Show), static, or texts ("On acid with Belinda Carlisle"). An audio track has the artist talking about life and another spins out pop tunes and tv show songs. Another piece was the simple reproduction of a young Al Gore campaign poster with "Vote Gore" in red, the proceeds going to the Gore campaign. Hmm. Where's the art? Nothing like Warhol's ironic silkscreen of a rude looking Dick Nixon with the tag line: Vote McGovern.
Name My Cat is the same earnest plain spoken request (the word "help" is printed in red on the invitation poster) that has come to characterize a certain feel good, charming and innocent aspect of contemporary American art -- and is perhaps something the French seem to appreciate. At the very least, three names for his cat: Pet-a-lot, Gurlish, and The Unexplained. Perhaps no explanation is necessary. Here's an interview with the artist…
When did you begin your Name Your Cat project? And Why? Where have you exhibited it? How many responses have you received? What are you trying to accomplish? Interactivity? To actually name your cat?
The cat project was made for the show in Paris and has three material manifestations, each involving different public realms. A poster of the cat was sent out through the mail to announce the show, the same image appears in this month's [April] Artforum, and the cat's picture is a work in the show, with a blank brass plaque on its frame which will be engraved at the end of the show with the cats name. Each version is linked to me through the Internet, where I can be contacted directly through the posted web address [namemyc@aol.com].
The Internet interests me as a free zone of exchange, where posted questions and expressed desires are actually responded to -- I guess because of the desire that people have to interact with one another. Thus far I've received about 40 responses [as of 15 April]. I'm also interested in how names ascribe and project identity -- in a sense the cat is a medium through which the viewer represents themselves -- and they can represent themselves to me -- a bit of a reversal -- if they send an e-mail. I also see the piece as an adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Your use of split video screens at the Yvon Lambert show I thought was quite wonderful. Particularly the golf ball/golf trophy piece. Tell me where this comes from, your interest in television and video, and whether you think video exhibited in galleries can be anything more than a spit in the eye of "image consumption" ?
My interest in TV and video comes from my interest in TV and film, which proceeded and exceeded my interest in art. I think that images are consumed in galleries and museums as they are elsewhere but there are particularities -- both physical and historical -- to every circumstance, and I try to keep the circumstances of art exhibition in the back of my mind when I make work. But I don't think that video is anymore obliged to "spit in anyone's eye" then say painting. Though most of my work is somewhat self-reflexive medium wise, hopefully it deals with other things too.
The Julia Roberts piece was both funny and obviously banal. These framed "works" have what point of departure for you? Has Julia Roberts seen your work?
With the Julia Roberts piece (Best Actress), and Four Stars as well, I was interested in how power hierarchy is represented graphically through the spatial ordering of names in movie billings. In Four Stars, a hierarchy is neutralized through a balanced homogenous field, and in Best Actress, a timeline is created that tells the story of Julia Roberts' rise to the near top of her field -- one step below Brad Pitt. I also think of these works as low-tech computer art, as they are made with just a word processor -- to which Eric Roberts has as much access as Julia.
Being an American, how do you assess the reaction in Paris to your work? Because you seem to comprehend the value of context, does the cachet of Yvon Lambert give the ostensibly "silly" nature of your aesthetic bites a tougher tear at the fabric of the art world?
As it is when I exhibit anywhere, it's always difficult to assess the response to my work. But I've been told that some people in Paris like it -- and I'm happy with the show. In part, that's because I was able to show whatever I wanted, which is not always the case. In response to your question about the context of the gallery, it of course helps to be taken seriously -- and not feeling pressured to have to demand that from the viewer freed me up a bit, I think. The cat project especially was conceived with the context of the gallery in mind.
Matthew Rose is a Paris-based artist and writer. His e-mail is: mistahrose@yahoo.com.

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