|
Ex caligine, nova insigna : anaphoros | Gegenschein (2008) is the Klat group's first monographic exhibition in France and only the second gallery
exhibition (after "One for the Money, Two for the Show" at the Francesca Pia gallery in Berne, 2001). Yet this group of artists from French-speaking Switzerland are not novices. Klat started out almost fifteen years ago, when its members were still self-taught teens--a rare enough event in the art world to be noteworthy. Today Klat has totted up over fifty exhibitions in all formats and twice represented Switzerland at international events (2nd Montreal Biennial, Palais du Commerce, 2000; International Pusan Biennial, Korea, 2002).
Klat decided from an early stage to almost exclusively inhabit the "public" art realm, as opposed to the "private" one represented by galleries--not so much in order to reject the market and its associated values as to focus their criticism on public cultural institutions, from city museums to alternative cultural spaces. Though frequently caustic and tinged with irony, this "criticism" is never cynical. Klat is first and foremost a way of occupying the ground, of living and working in it as effectively and above all as freely as possible
In 1997, when invited by Lionel Bovier and Christopher Cherix to Forde, an alternative exhibition space which they went on to program the following year, Klat decided to take over a wasteland hidden by construction site hoardings for 24 hours. The exhibition space on the second floor, emptied for the occasion and open for the duration of this "performance" ("Klat 1440'"), became a simple observation post from which to look out onto the other side of the street and watch a gang of teenagers camping out in the city, sleeping, listening to music, hanging out with friends and cooking sausages.
For a Mamco monographic exhibition in 1999, Klat dismantled the series of rooms allotted to them and used the wood to build a gigantic doll's house on wheels that served as a showcase for a massive collection of contemporary punk and anarchist fanzines. The group also set up an office containing a photocopier and a computer and manned this improvised "information kiosk" every day, inviting viewers to photocopy the fanzines they were interested in or else to make their own. Simultaneously, Klat presented a selection of "difficult"--to say the least--or even unshowable works found in the Mamco reserve collections, notably a far-out Condo (before his painting became popular again), a John Saint-Bernard (a farce orchestrated by the marvellous Collin de Land) or a pile of soft toys signed Charlemagne Palestine. Installed on a slant, each work was lit in turn for a few seconds before being plunged back into obscurity. ("Gimme 5", Mamco, and "15° Plan B", Forde, 1999).
It is hard to imagine the importance of the role Klat has played in French-speaking Switzerland for over ten years. Through its artists' work, curatorial activities and the various public spaces it has animated, the links the group has consistently forged and revived between different generations, cultural worlds and scenes can be compared with the networks established by John Armleder and the group Ecart twenty years earlier. By building houses and spaces in which to work, think, rest and party, Klat has managed to make the scene in French-speaking Switzerland a fun, open, clever space inhabitable by all.
Ex caligine, nova insigna: anaphoros ?Gegenschein is one of the few autonomous works in Klat's corpus, conceived independently from its exhibition context. This doesn't stop it, like all Klat's other installations, from provoking its share of chance meetings and collaborations. "Ex caligine, nova insigna: anaphoros ?Gegenschein" was originally going to be shown in New York in a group event that was then cancelled, before being shown for just a few hours at the Shark, the latest public exhibition space-cum-bar animated by Klat in Geneva. Where Laurent Godin just happened to be passing by...
Fabrice Stroun
Exhibition curator and art critic
(1st exhibition: "Ketchup", Forde, 1998, invited by the group Klat).
Stephen O'Malley is a founding member of the group SUNN O))), who have for the past decade explored sounds capacity of minimalism/maximalism as well as fusions with such underground metal cultures as Black, Death and Doom Metal. O'Malley has worked together with visual artists in gallery installation work, most notably with the American New Gothic sculptor, Banks Violette, the Italian artist Nico Vascellari, and here with the Swiss arts collaborative KLAT. The physical aspect of O'Malley's sound design solidifies with elements of structural and sculpture, bringing a reinterpretation of sound's weight, mass, presence and gravity to space.
http://www.klat.ch/
Informations et images disponibles sur demande.
Information and images available upon request.
Virginie Jacquet : virginie@laurentgodin.com - tel 33 1 42 71 10 66
Galerie Laurent Godin
T +33 (0)1 42 71 10 66
5, rue du grenier Saint-Lazare
75003 Paris - FR
http://www.laurentgodin.com
PHILIPPE DURAND - OFFSHORE 3
22 novembre 2008 - 03 janvier 2009
KLAT
Ex caligine, nova insigna : anaphoros | Gegenschein
10 janvier - 07 février 2009
MIKA ROTTENBERG
19 février - 28 mars 2009
ALEKSANDRA MIR
4 avril - 9 mai 2009
|
