Art Reviews

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Off the Beaten Track at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, Valais. These listings are not comprehensive yet. You'll probably find them most useful in French-speaking Switzerland and looking for an outing. From 17 June to 20 November, 2011, you can find some 70 Monet works (more than the usual 50) from age 26 to his last productive phase, many from private Swiss collections, as well as from the MusÈe Marmotan in Paris. Who knows when you will be able to see these again. You are likely to be surprised by the variety of his output, as well as the sheer mastery of Monet's depiction of light. Don't forget to also check out the music concerts staged at the Giannada during the summer.

Also an exhibition on Maurice BÈjart by Swiss photographer Marcel Imsand. This amazing photographer took his first pictures of the choreographer in 1964, and continued for some 30 years in friendship and respect.

The Fondation Pierre Gianadda is less than a two hour drive from Geneva or by train. Worth visiting even for the day. There are other exhibitions but also additional sites in Martigny such as the exceptional Roman museum and ruins.

For further information:

Fondation Pierre Gianadda

Martigny, Valais (Rhone Valley)

Switzerland

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Ecology was the keynote at the small Bio Fair in Ferney-Voltaire last Sunday, but the most surprising display at the show was an intriguing assortment of metal sculptures from Zimbabwe and Haiti, which were offered for sale by Christophe Arend, a regular at Ferney's Saturday markets.    

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Matching colors tends to be a subjective process. After all, how do you know that the red you see looks the same to everyone else?  When it comes to printing, it frequently doesn’t, and in fine art even slight variations can be critical.  As it turns out, Robert Koppanyi’s studio, Lingota S.N.C., part of Atelier JV17, which had its official launch party last Friday, has found an answer to one of the art world’s most perplexing problems.  

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If you missed "Images," Vevey's stunning visual arts festival which closed last Sunday, it is not too late to see some of the images on line. The festival will go down in local history as a remarkable explosion of creativity. A first for Switzerland was the enormous photographic enlargements covering the walls of some of Vevey's tallest buildings. That was the idea of JR, a French artist who has shown at the Tate in London. But many of the images were so original that they had no need size to make an impression.

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Slavery has been an unpleasant fact of life for nearly as long as mankind can remember. For French photographer Rafael Dallaporta, whose work is currently on exhibit until September 29 at Serge Macia’s Imaginaid Gallery at 28 Rue des Grottes, in Geneva, the dilemma was how to take a fresh look at a subject that has already been analyzed in almost every way imaginable.

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Porcelain normally adheres to fairly predictable forms: plates, bowls, cups and vases.  The exhibition at the Chateau de Nyon breaks with routine and propels the art  into a new dimension  that is much closer to sculpture.  The pieces which come from Europe, Asia and Africa, are on display  until October 10. For anyone interested in ceramics, the show is both delightful and spectacular.

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Art expands the imagination, drives us in unexpected directions and pushes the envelope of our lives.  Business strives for profits and predictability.  The two seemingly contradictory forces manage a surprisingly successful chemistry at the world’s leading fair on modern and contemporary art in Basel. 

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American photographer Louis Stettner’s haunting images of Paris and New York in the 1950s are on view at both the AD-Galerie in Genolier and the Chateau de Nyon—a rare opportunity, not be missed.

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Who cares about modern art?  If you were in the crowd standing in the cold to see the opening of the stunningly beautiful Centre Pompidou-Metz last week, you would conclude that it was just about everyone.

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Is Geneva really indifferent to contemporary art?  In terms of attendance, the recent “artbygenève” international art fair at Palexpo looked to the casual observer like a very pale shadow of the Salon du Livre book fair next door. That was a shame because in many ways, this year’s show, thanks largely to its talented art director, Christoph Bollmann,  was an energetic tour de force.  What went wrong with Geneva’s effort to create an international art fair?  Bad timing? Past history? Palexpo? Or is the real problem Geneva, itself?

As anyone following the city’s somewhat anemic contemporary art scene knows, artbygenève is the spiritual descendent of europ’art, a less than successful attempt over a number of years to marry the boisterous world of contemporary fine art to the cavernous plain vanilla spaces offered by Palexpo, the sprawling warehouse-style exhibition area attached to Geneva’s airport.   The Canton of Geneva is the principal backer of Palexpo, and its mission is to promote Geneva and Swiss business while providing a wide range of activities for the public.  As it turns out, Palexpo not only pays for itself independently of Swiss tax dollars, it also turns a tidy profit.  That said, it is better known for its auto show and a variety of trade fairs than for high culture.

The draw for artbygenève is the Salon du Livre, a book fair, which attracts nearly 100,000 visitors over a 5-day period.  Intellectuals like to read, and the idea is that while they are perusing the latest in books, they may find themselves attracted to the more rarified world of contemporary art on display next door. That is the theory, and it is a topic of hot debate both in the art world and among Palexpo’s backers. Exhibitors question whether the two publics have anything in common. The added problem is that many of the show’s previous offerings fell short of great art.  Christoph Bollmann explains diplomatically that in the past there often seemed more interest in selling exhibition space than in showcasing quality. Last year the show was reorganized and Bollmann was brought in to upgrade the show and to put it on the map.  Bollmann, who has a fine arts background and is also an architect, combines refined taste with an entrepreneurial spirit.  He helped launch the radio stations, Espace-2, the old World Radio Geneva and Couleurs-3.  His fortune, he admits, resulted from his passion for Russian 19^th century drawing.  He has lent part of his personal collection to Moscow’s celebrated Tretyakov Gallery.

Bollmann arrived a bit late on the scene to salvage last year’s show, although it earned high marks as an improvement over previous versions.  The improvement this year was exponential.   A number of the pieces on display rated world class stature—notably Genolier-based AD-Galerie’s lavish display of work by the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Watanabe, which ranged from two prints of Japanese monkeys in traditional regalia, to a striking, large black and white print of the reflection of the Washington Monument seen against the black granite wall of the Vietnam memorial (to contact the gallery click here --   or for a broader look at Watanabe’s work click here )

Serge Macias’ Imaginaid Gallery in Geneva’s La Grotte district ()  offered two equally spectacular photographs of white surfaces  by  Mathieu Gafsou, winner of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank’s 2009 prize for photography.  Caroline Martin, director of the Artscademia Gallery in Lutry.

showed the complex plexiglass “Mayan Diaries”of French artist Jean-Pierre Sergent, and Belgian artist, Madeleine van der Knoop, displayed a collection of striking animal sculptures, including stunning bronze castings of a baby gorilla and a stalking cheetah.

Leda Fletcher offered Hong Hao’s “My Things” a composite photo of the artists personal possessions. Art and Fusion offered Tunisian artist Mehdi Bouanani’s impressive portraits of Habib Bourguiba as a dynamic young politician and of Saddam Hussein during his last days.

While much of the art shown was energetic and occasionally dazzling, only a fraction of the people attending the Salon du Livre bothered to go next door to look at the art.  Palexpo estimates that nearly 100,000 people attended the book fair, while only around 25,000 specifically attended “Art by Geneve.”  Those figures may be misleading since anyone  entering the book fair had free access to the artbygenève as well. All told, however, the public looking at art looked pretty thin. As the fair drew to a close on Sunday, May 2, the crowds had picked up slightly, but it took a good deal of self-imposed optimism for a gallery owner who had laid out thousands of francs in the hopes of expanding clientele, to interpret the event as a major success.

“This is the kind of crowd that you’d get on a very slow day in New York’s Chelsea,” noted one observer drily.

The fact that this was going to be a hard slog was foretold by the notable absence of collectors and connoisseurs at the gala opening for “VIPs” on a Wednesday night.  The vast spaces empty of all but a few scattered bands of exhibitors and a gaggle of loyal supporters who would probably have come to the various galleries anyway, created a foreboding premonition of impending gloom.

One usually successful artist noted with a touch of bitterness that her participation had cost around €20,000.  “I already have my own clientele,” she said. “I don’t need to spend money on this.”  Her doubts were increased when the only two clients who had shown interest in actually buying something tried to knock several thousand euros off her asking price.  She refused. “This isn’t a third-world market,” she explained.

Despite the gloomy prognostications by some of the exhibitors, Bollmann remains optimistic. “I have always seen art as an occasion to meet and to share.”  Bollmann noted that the crowd that buys a book might not have 50,000 francs to put down on a painting.  The world of collectors is a very narrow one.  But by putting the two events together, there is always the chance of spillover, that visitors will be exposed to something that they might not otherwise have seen, and that will attract their interest, and draw them into becoming more involved with something that they were previously not aware existed.  That, after all, is part of Palexpo’s mission statement.  Bollmann sees the campaign to put Geneva and the show on the map as a place for collectors and the public to look for fine art as a long-term effort, which involves building the city’s reputation as a place where art is taken seriously.

To accomplish that, Palexpo has a long way to go. One step would be to put more resources into communications.  On the opening night a half-dozen invitees were trekking back and forth across the footbridge spanning the autoroute, trying to locate which of Palexpo’s far flung spaces was actually being used for the show. A paucity of posters and advanced publicity had left the few who had braved the traffic jam on the autoroute to actually get there in a state of confusion just as they were coming down the finishing line. There was so little advanced publicity, in fact, that a handful of visitors stumbled onto the show by accident while looking for an exhibition on Swiss artist, Félix Vallotton,  which had been abundantly advertised in downtown Geneva, but which everyone seemed to have just as much difficulty in locating. Since Palexpo doesn’t make a profit yet on “Art by Genève, there is a natural reluctance to spend heavily on promotion. But that tends to create a self-fulfilling downward spiral. For exhibitors, hoping to recoup their considerable investment, the situation was less than amusing. “I don’t really need a public that finds my stand accidentally while looking for someone else,” sniffed one.

Inevitably, a few disheartened exhibitors began to ask whether Geneva is capable of supporting an art market. While the question is worth asking, the fact is that Switzerland counts some of the world’s most knowledgeable collectors. Basel’s art show, which is by invitation only, sets the platinum standard—the art world’s equivalent of the Cannes film festival or the Venice Biennale.  Can Geneva compete? The answer depends on vision and the will to make a difference.  The proof is that even Brussels, often considered to be lethally conservative, has managed to create a major art fair that draws international collectors. The Swiss-French frontalier zone that comprises the cross-border greater Geneva covers a population of roughly four million people—most of them highly educated, professionally oriented and cultured. But do they care for art? “Geneva’s great for watches, jewelry and auto shows,” observed a somewhat dejected  exhibitor at the show. “When it comes to art, they could care less.”

Bollmann clearly does not feel that way, and he is not alone. “There were moments when I thought this was almost hopeless,” says Tanja Hueber, who worked on the show for Palexpo. “Now I am convinced that it is going to be successful.”

Ultimately, the deciding factors will be commitment and time.  If Geneva wants to be taken seriously, it will have to make an investment in making that happen.  It will also need to take a more imaginative approach to promoting itself.

“Palexpo could have handed out free tickets in the luxury hotels around here,” said one exhibitor. “They could have done a lot of things.”

To see a slideshow of some of the work offered at the Fair, click here

Le futur c’est pas gagné (The future is not assured) is the latest exhibition to open at Pieceunic, Art Contermporain at 50 rue des Bains in the heart of Geneva’s Quartier des Bains gallery district.  Rosa Turetsky, who opened Pieceunic in 2005, conceived of it more as a laboratory for young artists than as a commercial venture.  The idea is to focus on a single commissioned work which allows the artist to experiment on a larger dimension with a piece that requires  deeper reflection.  Isamu Krieger, a Swiss-Japanese artist, who was born in Tokyo, but raised in Geneva, describes his installation as a dystopic urban landscape, consisting of 11 holographic images of a city scape, each encased in its own crystal sphere, and separated from the others by a barren landscape of dark concrete, floating in space.  The work’s title comes from the poet, Arthur Rimbaud: “Plus de lendemain, braises de satin, votre ardeur est le devoir.”—No more tomorrow, satin embers, your passion is your duty.”  Krieger’s other work (see below) is equally imaginative and occasionally spectacular.  He is a master of “la main levée” –the raised hand—a technique the artist engages in a complex drawing without once raising his pencil from the paper.

 

The exhibition “Antipersonnel 1:1” which opened at the Imaginaid Gallery at 28 Rue Des Grottes, Thursday night, shows the work of a young French photographer, Raphaël Dallaporta, who has spent the last decade recording some of the most lethal objects to spring from the imagination of modern man. Dallaporta’s unusual and troubling book, Antipersonnel 1:1, which will be published early next year by Kodoji Press, contains 35 photographs of antipersonnel mines and cluster bombs presented life size, with a flare and attention to detail more characteristic of fashion magazines, than arms catalogues.  The Imaginaid show offers a unique opportunity to see Dallaporta’s work before it appears in print.  The images range from the cold steel brutality of a Russian cluster bomb, to the unpretentious functionality of an American-made bomblet.  The deadly instruments, intended to cripple or kill the most people possible are placed on one wall, with the creative work  of Russia, the United States and France placed side-by-side. The photograph of a French cluster bomb looks astonishingly more like an expensive bottle of perfume --an object of desire--than a lethal device. As we all know from the incursion into Lebanon two years ago, in which American-manufactured cluster bombs were used on a massive scale--the victims are often civilians and frequently children. 

It is impossible to go to Martigny these days and not be aware of Balthus.  The artist, who died in 2001, has his name plastered everywhere, on the town city hall, on the windows of cafes, the walls of houses and even the exits on the autoroute.  This is the hundredth anniversary of Balthus’ birth, and the Foundation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny is hosting the world’s only definitive retrospective of his work.  Jean Claire, former director of the Picasso Museum, and author of the only catalogue raisonné on  Balthus work, co-curated the exhibition, and the quality approaches the level one would expect at Paris’ Pompidou or New York’s MoMa.  The paintings have been drawn from collections around the world, and the show is scheduled to run through November 23.  For anyone interested in art, this is a unique opportunity not to be missed.

 

Some 40 sculptors from Switzerland, France, Netherlands, India, Poland, Nigeria and elsewhere have been chiseling away at stone or wood blocks to create their works of art in full view of the public. Working as part of a living and constantly developing exhibition under tents just outside the ramparts of the Chateau of Morges, this is a superb opportunity for young people to witness how artists embrace their craft.