GO-KARTING TROPHY
PARIS
1996
RUE LOUISE WEISS, PARIS
“Six art galleries decided to set up shop in this new main road, at the foot of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, without engaging in a competitive vibe.”
MOVING TO 30 RUE LOUISE WEISS
PARIS
April 1997
DJ SET BY ANDRE SARAIVA AND CATHY AND DAVID GUETTA FOR THE OPENING PARTY OF THE GALLERIES RUE LOUISE WEISS
PARIS
April 1, 1997
Frédéric Taddei speaking about rue Louise Weiss
The sculpture Hiropon (the title refers to a Japanese drug) illustrates an ultra-sexy feminine character, taking up the principle of the small ready-to-paint figurines that the otakus collect. This super-hero differs from these popular objects in the extreme violence of its erotic evocations and its life-size scale. Brought over into the field of contemporary art, these fantasies trap the academicism of the traditional Japanese culture and force it to acknowledge its excesses by warping them.
THE GRAMERCY INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ARTFAIR
Maurizio Cattelan patiently taught bullfinches to sing songs (“Bella Ciao,” or “Indian Summer”) and then released them into the forest. He transformed exhibition spaces into laboratories (beds for meditation, a phenylethylamine substance that makes you fall in love); he held conferences on the subject of subliminal odors, which regulate attraction and repulsion. He created extraordinary gardens, with tomato plants whose growth was accelerated by contraceptive pills, plants that committed suicide, and mandarin oranges that tasted like sperm. Later, visitors were able to experience the exhibition “Glück” (Luck) while flying, attached by a one-wing Delta harness, and to traverse the exhibition Skop via different electric vehicles, stopping to pick a strawberry, putting on glasses whose lenses transformed one’s vision, moving fruit trees in backpacks, and taking a break in a voting booth or within the prototype of a utopian house designed by Matti Suuronen.
The exhibition “Moi-même-Soi-même” (“Myself-Oneself”) will showcase space as the most intimate thing about oneself, akin to the soul...