Jean-Pierre Criqui

Blending Fluxus, Pop and performance art, Marclay has tested and reinvented the relationship between art and sound over the past four decades

Published on the occasion of Christian Marclay’s major survey at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, this volume explores in depth his popular and influential multimedia art. From his early performances in the 1970s to his iconic Guitar Drag (2000) and large-scale video installations such as All Together (2018), Marclay has ranged freely across mediums—photography, modified musical instruments, videos, prints and paintings, objects and graphic scores—exploring auditory existence through strategies of sampling, shuffling and montage.
Designed by Zak Group and extensively illustrated, the publication gathers together new essays by writers Polly Barton and Nathalie Quintane, art historians Michel Gauthier and Marcella Lista, and design specialist Catherine de Smet. It also features a conversation with Marclay by the exhibition’s curator, Jean-Pierre Criqui, an anthology of texts from an international array of writers and art historians—Clément Chéroux, Dennis Cooper, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Wayne Koestenbaum and David Toop—and a comprehensive chronology by Annalisa Rimmaudo.
London- and New York–based visual artist and composer Christian Marclay (born 1955) was born in California, raised in Geneva, Switzerland, and studied sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. He won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 54th Venice Biennale for his video The Clock and has had solo shows at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC (1990); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2001); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002); and the Whitney Museum, New York (2010).… (meer)

The exhibition, Pierre Bismuth Everyone is an artist but only the artist knows it, mixes emblematic works of the French artist with others specially designed for the occasion and offers a new approach to his work, no doubt. one of the most unique artistic endeavors on the contemporary scene.

Little known to the general public, Pierre Bismuth was however rewarded in 2005 for the synopsis of the film "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" for which he won the Oscar for best screenplay with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufmann.

The title of the exhibition refers to a recurring problematic in the work of Pierre Bismuth, precisely the condition of the artist in a context where culture has completely integrated the leisure industry and where industrial production perfectly assimilated the aesthetic issues. What is the place of creativity in a context where art has emancipated itself from any specific know-how? Can the artist be anything other than an eccentric figure offering a unique vision of the world?

Pursuing research on identity - visual, plastic, symbolic - and on our relationship to cultural productions, he readily uses film clips as well as works by other artists or found images.

Among the works on display, the felt marks on a screen of the movement of the hand of a film character: Marylin Monroe in "Some people like it hot", Janet Leigh in "Psycho", or Sigmund Freud. A way of recording the ephemeral while emphasizing its symbolic weight.

The catalog, designed like an artist's book in close collaboration with Pierre Bismuth, will present a much wider selection of his works than the exhibition, looking back on his production since 1988, commented on by 4 specialists from the world of contemporary art and images.… (meer)

The second in a unique series of anthologies which collects key writings by and on the most significant artists in contemporary culture. Influencing a whole generation of artists, musicians and theorists, since the late 1970s Christian Marclay has explored the interplay between sound, audio cultures and art across a diversity of media: performance, sculpture, photography, collage, musical composition, film, video and installation. Born in 1955, Marclay first became internationally known in the 1980s for his sculptures and reassembled readymades generated from evocative materials such as fragmented vinyl records or album covers. His ambitious multi-screen installations such as Video Quartet (2002), Crossfire (2007) and The Clock (2010) have entranced audiences into contemplating the complexities of time and narrative and the role of sound in their experience and representation. Marclay has also collaborated musically with Shelley Hirsch, the Kronos Quartet, Zeena Parkins, Elliott Sharp, Sonic Youth and John Zorn, among many others. Edited by curator and critic Jean-Pierre Criqui, this volume brings together the artists statements and conversations with Bice Curiger, Jan Estep, Russell Ferguson, Kim Gordon, Douglas Kahn, Frances Richard, Philip Sherburne, Michael Snow, Lars Sderkvist, David Toop and Philip von Zweck. Writings on all aspects of Marclays work are provided by Clment Chroux, Dennis Cooper, Christoph Cox, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Noam M. Elcott, Russell Ferguson, Douglas Kahn, Rahma Khazam, Wayne Koestenbaum, Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Y. Levin, Tom Morton, Ingrid Schaffner, Olivier Schefer, Zadie Smith, David Toop and Rob Young.… (meer)