International Art News

Fury 1976 - © Mac Adams / Courtesy gb agency / Collection du musée Nicéphore Niépce

From the 18th of June to the 11 of  September 2011 – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean
In a recent text, Mac Adams referred to the bet that the American author Ernest Hemingway made one day with some writer friends, wagering that he could make up a story with just six words. He wrote: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” And he won the bet. Mac Adams’ whole œuvre seems to be an extension of that bet.

Mac Adams’ photographs and installations broach the issue of narration with similarly sparse means as Hemingway, exploring the fictional potential that can emerge from the juxtaposition of a few images or objects: “How can you tell a story by not using more than two or three images, or describe a situation using as few objects as possible?”, the artist asks.

The noir genre imposed itself on Mac Adams in his earliest photographs as a favourite field of investigation because the complexity of the relations between narrative elements – characters, facts, places, objects… – forms, more than in any other fictional genre, its very node. His works are often organised in two- or three-image sequences and show us narrative snippets in which the main action is invariably absent, relegated to the space between images, into the temporal or off-screen ellipsis. Mac Adams defines this approach with the term “narrative void”. The image becomes a network of clues that the spectator is invited to go through in the manner of an inquiry, shedding light on the mechanisms and mainsprings of the plot itself at the same time as it proposes an open reading.

Mac Adams is known above all for his photographs, but since the beginning of his career he has also been producing installations in which, nevertheless, photography has a central place. The show at Mudam emphasises this aspect of his work by presenting three installations, in tandem with a selection of photographs ranging from the 1970s to the present day.

Conceived as fictitious environments developed around crime scenes, Passenger and The Bathroom are reconstructions of two installations initially created in 1978. A third installation, specially devised by Mac Adams for the museum’s Pavilion, is presented in the form of a cluster of images arranged on tables, associating archival imagery and photographs by the artist.
Museum Hours

David Lynch Magic Man Outside My House, 2008 Lithographie, 66 x 89 cm 30 ex./japon © David Lynch. Courtesy Nosbaum & Reding, Luxembourg

From 13 January to 25 February 2011 – Galerie Nosbaum & Reding – Art Contemporain
David Lynch, born in 1946 in Missoula, Montana (USA), has, along with his filmmaking career, plunged in recent years to another field of expression that he holds dear.

Renowned for its brilliant and remarkable films like Eraserhead (1976), The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990) (Palme d’Or at Cannes), and more recently Lost Highway (1996), Mulholland Drive (2001), Inland Empire (2006), or even the magical and legendary series Twin Peaks, Lynch has been nominated many times in prestigious international awards including the Oscars. In 2006 he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for his work.

David Lynch is also a painter, sculptor and photographer. He started with painting and studied at the Beaux-Arts academic in Boston and Philadelphia. He never ceased to express himself through drawing, printmaking and painting. In 2007 a major retrospective devoted to his paintings at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Currently Mönchehaus Museum Goslar, Germany has held an exhibition related to the famous international award Goslar Kaiserring that David Lynch was awarded in 2010 for his entire artistic career (previous winners Others Willem de Kooning, Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Cy Twombly Jenny Holzer, Cindy Sherman, …). Prof. Dr. Werner Spies, art historian and former Director of the National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, held the honorific speech at the award ceremony.

At the Gallery Nosbaum Reding, David Lynch presents a series of lithographs and drawings produced between 2007-2010. The themes, obsessions and surreal universe in his plastic works, reflect the ambiances of his films. Like these, the viewer is drawn into a world of mystery, fantasy, perversion, nightmares, not devoid of humanity, tenderness, humor, comedy … a parallel world, he is at the border of the real space and dreams and confronted to his own self.

Gallery Hours

“Sans titre, still dancing on John Wayne’s head” by Bruno Peinado.

25 September 2010 – 9 January 2011 – Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain
At a turning point in his artistic career, Bruno Peinado (*1970) seizes the opportunity provided by this solo exhibition to sum up the last decade of frantic creation and production. The artist, an insatiable consumer of all types of images that are as many reference points in his works, casts his gaze on his own work to review its reading and to set new perspectives. For this exhibition, some old pieces are revisted in order to interact with new productions. This baroque project questions the artworks‘ status as well as the exhibition dogma. The exhibition space of Casino Luxembourg – entirely occupied by the artist – does not just house the artworks but actively participates, sometimes highlighting them and sometimes placing them in shadow. Visitors thus are really involved in discovering the exhibition and find themselves carried away by the discoveries made on route. A monograph on Bruno Peinado will be published on the occasion of the exhibition. With texts by Julien Fronsacq (curator, Palais de Tokyo, Paris), Patrice Joly (editor in chief and director of the art magazine 02), Aude Launay (art critic), Clio Lavau (curator), Mick Peter (artist), and Kevin Muhlen (artistic director of Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain)

Museum Hours

Casino Luxembourg – Until the 5 September 2010
When referring to Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, perhaps no phrase has been uttered more often than, “This is not a casino!” After all, the name of the centre can fool almost anyone into mistaking the purpose of the building. The current exhibition sets the tone by adopting this title, further adding to the confusion by exhibiting works that, in fact, evoke the idea of gaming! Indeed, each piece in the show appears to be an invitation to play—whether video console, merry-go-round, playing field, or other games. And yet the reality remains unchanged—no gaming goes on here.
The exhibition therefore reproduces the frustration experienced by visitors who come here thinking they will find games of chance. This theme could have easily resulted in yet another show on the relationship between art and playfulness. But what is underscored here is the double twist and frustration associated with gaming. Art and game-playing—which have often been compared in recent art criticism—are in fact similar practices: both call for (indeed, embody) a free spirit on one hand, and a precise set of rules on the other hand. Both tend to set up binary oppositions that give rise to meanings, symbols and related emotions—like a goal that has either been scored or not scored, once and for all, a status that inherently generates intense, wide-ranging reactions from everyone involved (players, referees, spectators, commentators, TV viewers). This relationship between binary status and analogue reaction is specific to games yet is mirrored in the artistic techniques employed in these works.
A participatory element is also present in this show. The beholder becomes a player, spontaneously drawn into the exhibition with all its subversions and frustrations—visitors may even feel they’re being toyed with. Sixteen artists present their own approaches, chosen according to the rules of this non-casino. Several artists produced site-specific works specially for this show.
Taking ambiguity to its logical limit, the 15th anniversary of the Casino Luxembourg’s transformation into an exhibition venue is, and isn’t, the inspiration behind Ceci n‘est pas un Casino. There is nothing retrospective about this show, and the only historical allusion is the thematic reference. However, the retrospective notion is openly expressed in the catalogue, which, in addition to an introduction by curators Kevin Muhlen and Jo Kox, features essays on the Casino and its various functions down through history by Marc Jeck, Paul Reiles, and Didier Damiani, not to mention a discussion of playfulness and gaming by a psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Rauchs, and a historical analysis of ludic approaches to art by art historian Bettina
Pierre Ardouvin, Robert Barta, Patrick Bérubé, Marc Bijl, Hermine Bourgadier, Antoinette J. Citizen, Courtney Coombs, Jacob Dahlgren, Paul Kirps, Walter Langelaar, Annika Larsson, Ian Monk, Laurent Perbos, Letizia Romanini, Stéphane Thidet, Olaf Val.

More Info