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WISH YOU WERE HERE Michel Boubon, Paul Bower, Alberto Brusamolino, Anthony Burrill, Paolo Giardi, Billie Jean et James Joyce.
23 ─ 26 octobre 2009
SLICK ART FAIR
104, rue d’Aubervilliers ou 5, rue Curial
Paris 19

 

LESS IS MORE PROJECTS
www.lessismoreprojects.com

‘Wish you were here’ is the official debut of Less is More Projects. Its agenda looks at a different and more approachable way of making and consuming art. Less is More Projects is not representing any artist but creates exhibitions and situations out of the walls of its office. The gallery appears and disappears, it’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The title of the show is an all-inclusive manifesto, an invitation to the opening, a suggestion that, to make a ‘happening’ happening, the presence of the public/viewer is not only desired, but strictly required. Less is More Projects will only exist in the shared artistic experience, whatever form it will decide to take.

‘Wish you were here’ suggests that something exotic, maybe a Paradise, has been found, and quickly lost. The selected seven artists, although coming from different backgrounds, are all concerned with the pressing themes of collective consumption and individual spirituality, presence and absence, recent memories
and ancient myths.

Less is More Projects is an office based in Paris and London, initiated and run by artists Alberto Brusamolino and Michel Boubon with the worthy collaboration of an old friend, artist and shadow consultant, Paolo Giardi.

presents

 

26 - 29 March 2010

Preview and vernissage, March 25

60, rue de Richelieu

Paris 02

 

Alberto Brusamolino, Michel Boubon and Paolo Giardi

 

For Chic Drawing Art Fair, Less is More Projects presents an exhibition project especially adapted to the context of this art fair:  a showcase of contemporary drawings. Curators have responded with an unconventional exhibition that, as the title suggest, will recreate an allegorical stage set where the portrait of an imaginary collector and the sale of his contemporary art collection are presented.

 

"The collection", writes Pascal Griener, "is an essentially ephemeral phenomenon. Death, the great auctioneer, orchestrates its inception and its end, dissolving the patiently constituted groups of works. Each objects is then released to a temporary freedom, and speaks to a new generation of art lovers."

 

Visitors are invited to share, to learn and to see the privacy of collecting through the eyes of a collector.

 

Alongside the interior decoration and furniture, the selected artworks will transform the space into a domestic ambience; a room in the appartment of the mysterious, Mister X.

 

The identity of Mister X, his obsessive character, lifestyle and passions, will compose the story of this exhibition. The installation will have a closer resemblance to a small film set rather than a conventional art display.

 

Curators Alberto Brusamolino, Paolo Giardi and Michel Boubon are the culprits of this meticulous staging.

 

 

Phil Ashcroft, Rodolphe Auté, Michel Boubon, Alberto Brusamolino, Joe Chen, Hervé Garcia, Paolo Giardi, Ian Gonczarow, Iain Hector, Alicia Nauta and Ceal Warnants.

 

 

For further information

 

www.lessismoreprojects.com

www.chic-artfair.com

http://chicdessin2010.wordpress.com

 

 

Iain Hector

On Every Street in Every City, 2009

Screenprint/2 colours/250gsm

70x50 cm

Courtesy of the artist

 

*

 

 

Phil Ashcroft

born 1970

lives and works in London, UK

 

Rodolphe Auté

born 1970

lives and works in Paris, France

 

Michel Boubon

born in south of France, 1962

lives and works in Paris, France

 

Alberto Brusamolino

born in Florence, Italy in 1965

lives and works in Paris, France

 

Hervé Garcia

born in Marseille, France in 1971

lives and works in Cologne, Germany

 

Paolo Giardi

born in Florence, Italy in 1964

lives and works in London, UK

 

Ian Gonczarow

born in Lancashire, in 1975

lives and works in London and Moscow

 

Iain Hector

lives and works in London, UK

 

Susana Lamberti

born in Buenos Aires, Argentine

lives and works in Paris, France

 

Alicia Nauta

lives and works in Toronto, Canada

 

Ceal Warnants

lives and works in London, UK

 

 

 

Phil Ashcroft

Yeti Over Mount Fuji (Shooting Star), 2009

Screenprint on 270gsm heavyweight paper

42 x 59,4 cm

Edition of 150

Courtesy of the artist

 

lessismoreprojects@me.com




Artist' biography

The unknown is a space at once fascinating and fearful by mankind’s technological advances and the romantic notion that there still lies undiscovered elements to the world in which we live. A derelict hospital, oil depots, nuclear power stations, the abominable snowman; collectively these semi-surreal settings and cartoon-like motifs appear as mysterious manifestations, phenomena both real and imagined.

Combining influences from abstract expressionism, British landscape painting, Japanese woodcuts, and graphic street art, Ashcroft integrates varied visual styles to generate a crossover between space, object and environment.

“At first sight, Ashcroft’s images seem to represent a utopia of modern structures. It is only at closer inspection that we realise that there are hints at some unspecified catastrophe in his desolate urban landscape images, empty of human existence. He designs semi-surreal and cartoon-like settings, inspired by youthful obsessions in science fiction. His work has been situated in art gallery settings as well as in graphic design and consumer products.” - The Garman Ryan Collection, New Art Gallery Walsall (2007)


Phil Ashcroft is an artist based in London. Solo exhibitions include Toxicity, Margaret Harvey Gallery, UH Galleries, St Albans (2006); Yeti In Hong Kong, EXIT, Hong Kong (2005) and Nitro Deluxe, Deptford X, London (2001). Ashcroft was a finalist in the Celeste Art Prize 2007 and selected for Contemporary Art Society’s ARTfutures 2007 and 2005, Bloomberg SPACE, London.

Recent exhibitions include Chic Drawing Art Fair Paris with Less is More Projects (2010); The Free Art Fair, Barbican, London (2009); a commissioned, site-specific billboard for Deptford X, London (2009);Heart of Glass, Concrete and Glass, London (2008); Wonder Island, Schwartz Gallery, London (2008); Special Relationship, Scion Space, Los Angeles (2008); The Golden Record, The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh touring to The Lincoln Collection and g39, Cardiff (2008-09); Out of the Box, Garman Ryan Permanent Collection, New Art Gallery, Walsall (2007-08).

Ashcroft also exhibits as ‘PhlAsh’ collaborating on live-painting projects in galleries and alternative spaces from street locations to shops. These have included Special Relationship, Scion Space, Los Angeles (2008), Elephant Technique, Village Underground (2006), All The People We Like Are Dead, London (2004), and Graffiti Meets Windows 1, Hank-Yu Department Store, Osaka (2002).

presents

On Couche Ensemble, 2010

"I Like Your Work" is a year long programme of one work, one artist, small scale curated exhibitions presented as every two months event online and in our office space in complement of our exhibitions programme.


Image

Paolo Giardi

On Couche Ensemble, 2010

Watercolour and black ink on acid free 400gsm watercolour paper

70x100 cm

Courtesy of the artist

 

 

Statement

Paolo Giardi
And Tomorrow Is Already Yesterday, or How the Heart Skips a Beat
 
 
Location:  Paris
Themes:  Expectation, relationships, sexuality, disillusion. The human nature.
 
Love seems quite a major theme in movies, literature, music, but not so much in art. Or
not anymore. Somehow death is still a big subject. Nature and the self. Sometimes
religion. Art is the crucial subject in art.
 
‘Please don’t say we’re done
When I’m not finished’
The XX – Heart Skipped A Beat
 
Synopsis:  The new series of watercolours entitled ‘And Tomorrow is Already
Yesterday, or How the Heart Skips a Beat’ are conceived as random frames from a
romantic Photostory. In sketching and re-sketching the preparatory collages, Giardi
keeps adding different and contrasting elements to his narrative, following the method
of composition or writing in Proust’s brouillons. The final execution, a montage of
images, techniques and styles borrowed from vintage magazines, graphic design,
literature and comic strips, presents us with a “circle of love”, a world of signs that
must be deciphered, that is, interpreted.
 
‘The beloved’s lies are the hieroglyphics of love. 
The interpreter of love’s signs is necessarily the interpreter of lies.’
Gilles Deleuze – Proust & Signs

 

 

 

2010

Watercolour and oil paint on acid free 400gsm watercolour paper

100x70cm

How Do You Handle a Hungry Man?
2010
Watercolour and oil paint on acid free 400gsm watercolour paper
100x70cm
 
As If
2010
Watercolour, black ink and oil paint on acid free 400gsm watercolour paper
100x70cm
 
Parce Que Je Suis un Menteur
2010
Watercolour and black ink on acid free 400gsm watercolour paper
100x70cm

Private collection, Paris

 
Meanwhile in Paris
2010
Black ink on acid free 400gsm watercolour paper
70x100cm
 

 

 

www.lessismoreprojetcs.com

lessismoreprojects@me.com

 

 

Less is More Projects
presents
Mind the Gap

Chic Art Fair
October 22 — 25, 2010
Vernissage and professional preview Octobre 21, 2010
Cité du Design
34, quai d'Austerlitz
Paris 13


For Chic Art Fair Less is More Projects presents a group show that pays homage to what Brian O'Doherty called "this unshadowed, white, clean, artificial, space devoted to the technology of esthetics" in his essay Notes on the gallery space, published in Artforum in 1976.

Is the white cube still reactionary ?


"Some of the sanctity of the church, the formality of the courtroom, the mystique of the experimental laboratory joins with chic design to produce a unique chamber of esthetics."

"A gallery is constructed along laws as rigorous as those for building a medieval church. The outside world must not come in [ ... ]. Walls are painted white. The ceiling becomes the source of light [ ... ]. The art is free, as the saying used to go, "to take on its own life." The discreet desk may be the only piece of furniture.
In this context a standing ashtray becomes almost a sacred object, just as the firehose in a modern museum looks not like a firehose but an esthetic conundrum. [ ... ] Unshadowed, white, clean, artificial, the [ gallery ] space is devoted to the technology of esthetics."

Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, University of California Press, 2000.



Artists
Phil Ashcroft, Michel Boubon, Alberto Brusamolino, Paolo Giardi, Marc Antoine Léval,
Landon Metz, James Moss, Guillaume Paris and RYCA.


*

About Less is More Projects
Less is More Projects is an office space, a future looking glass door, a form of intervention, initiated at the end of 2009 and run by artists Alberto Brusamolino and Michel Boubon with the worthy collaboration of an old friend, artist and shadow consultant Paolo Giardi.

Without a permanent physical space and based in Paris, Less is More Projects is not representing any artist but creates exhibitions and situations out of the walls of its office. The event appears and disappears, it’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time. We would like to suggest a new approach of art production, presentation and consumption, another way to do and to show.

First stage of this adventure was the launch of Less is More Projects at Slick 09 Art Fair in Paris with “Wish You Were Here” as the inaugural exhibition. December 2009, Less is More Projects launched the editions section presenting its first limited edition prints by artist Paolo Giardi.

For Chic Dessin 2010, Less is More Projects presented "The Collection of the late Mister X, or the advantages of being a collector". Alongside the interior decoration and furniture, the selected artworks transformed the space into a domestic ambience; a room in the appartment of the mysterious collector, Mister X. Visitors were invited to share, to learn and to see the privacy of collecting through the eyes of a collector.

From May 2010, "I Like Your Work" is year long programme of one work, one artist, small scale curated exhibitions presented every two months as an event both online and in our office space.

Less is More Projects continues to develop exhibition projects and events with international artists, trying to find a specific space for each project.


Thanks to
KALEIDOSCOPE - a contemporary magazine

PAPIER +

PAPER MONUMENT - a journal of contemporary art

GRAPH'ESSAIS Imprimerie


Image

"Mind the Gap" exhibition invite, front: found photograph at Brussels flea market

 

      
For further information

www.lessismoreprojects.com
www.chic-artfair.com