Tag: perrotin

Lee Bae at Perrotin Gallery

Korean-Parisian artist Lee Bae’s medium is more than a means to an end.  Since buying a cheap bag of charcoal as a cash-strapped new arrival to the French art scene in 1990, Lee’s interest in the medium has expanded to drawings, sculpture and 2-D mosaics of polished charcoal.  He points to the role of charcoal in Korean culture (from art medium to building material) to connect to age-old tradition to his production today.  At Perrotin Gallery’s spacious upstairs space, the artist has installed sculptures of Korean pine turned to charcoal in his own kiln, a month-long process which results in a piece of material with endless possibilities.  (On view through Dec 21st.)

Lee Bae, installation view of ‘Promenade’ at Galerie Perrotin, Nov 2019.

JR at Galerie Perrotin

After famously taking his mobile photo studio to Times Square for his ‘Inside Out’ portrait project in 2013, French street artist JR hit New York’s streets again in Spring ’18 to make detailed photo collages championing the everyday New Yorker, now on view at Galerie Perrotin.   Titled ‘Chronicles of New York City,’ the project follows ‘Chronicles’ in Paris and San Francisco and is also currently featured in Brooklyn Museum’s Great Hall.  JR invited over a thousand New Yorkers to step into his truck turned studio to ‘present themselves as they’d like to be seen and remembered.’  The resulting collages bring the city’s citizens together in harmony and common purpose. (On view on the Lower East Side through Oct 26th.)

JR, detail from ‘The Chronicles of New York City, Lightbox, USA, print on duratrans, led backlight, steel frame, 2018.

Mel Ziegler at Galerie Perrotin

Fifteen years of collected memorabilia from Mt Rushmore yielded the material for artist Mel Ziegler’s one thousand digitally printed portraits of the monument’s four presidents, currently filling the ground floor of Galerie Perrotin on the Lower East Side.  Though repetition and systemization are key, the degradation of each image – suggesting they were lifted from cheaply made or tiny reproductions – leaves the most lasting impression.  Despite the scale of the effort in the original Rushmore or Ziegler’s redo, there’s no guarantee that a burnished image will be handed down to posterity.  (On view through Aug 16th).

Mel Ziegler, detail installation view of ‘1000 Portraits,’ inkjet on canvas, dimensions variable, each canvas 8 x 10 inches, 2018.

Paola Pivi at Perrotin Gallery

The word for Italian born, Alaska-based artist Paola Pivi’s installation of multi-colored, feathered baby bears at Perrotin Gallery on the Lower East Side is ‘cute.’  Explaining that the installation was inspired by her adopted son’s “energy, life and positivity,” Pivi developed a series of bears playfully fighting, doing acrobatics and generally looking to inspire ‘awwwws.’  (On view through June 8th).

Paola Pivi, installation view of ‘We Are the Baby Gang’ at Perrotin Gallery, April 2019.

Michael Sailstorfer at Galerie Perrotin

Berlin-based artist Michael Sailstorfer’s tear-themed show at Galerie Perrotin aims to convert sadness to fun.  Here, a rickety farm building is destroyed by wrecking balls in the shape of teardrops (cables were removed post-production). Elsewhere, the artist prepares tear-shaped lumps of coal for burning and morphed Bavarian beer bottles into tear-shapes with the help of a glass-blower.  (On view on the Lower East Side through April 13th).

Michael Sailstorfer, Tranen, video, 2015.