Wish You Were Here
23 October - 4 November, 2009
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http://www.lessismoreprojects.com
WISH YOU WERE HERE
Group Show - Michel Boubon, Paul Bower, Alberto Brusamolino, Anthony Burrill, Paolo Giardi, Billie Jean and James Joyce
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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.
LESS IS MORE PROJECTS EDITIONS LAUNCHING
9 December - 31 January, 2010
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http://www.lessismoreprojects.com
EDITIONS LAUNCHING !
Less is More Projects is thrilled that artist Paolo Giardi has generously agreed to launch our Editions section by producing two limited editions from his series Art de Vivre 2005-2008 ...
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LESS IS MORE PROJECTS EDITIONS LAUNCHING !
Less is More Projects is thrilled that
artist Paolo Giardi has generously agreed to launch our Editions section by
producing two limited editions from his series Art de Vivre 2005-2008.
Paolo Giardi
Art de Vivre
‘we can be heroes, just for one day…’
Art de Vivre is a series of collages produced between 2005 and 2008. It is a comment on the unattainable desire for harmony between human existence and action in the world. Starting as a parody on the fantasy of omnipotence and the fear of failure, the work draws references from personal memories, collective myths and traumas. The collages bring together a wide array of materials; clippings from magazines, workout manuals, graphic logo books and vintage photographic prints, seemingly connected via a chain of associations.
The New World, the healthy body culture, the Superhuman: many of the theories so dear to Modernism are here under scrutiny. With borrowing the formal composition of avant-guard propaganda posters, Art de Vivre turns the positive vision, forward thinking, assertive language of Modernism into an uncertain, dark, intimate reflection, questioning the role and future of the human being in this world. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Wile Coyote, Superman and Flash Gordon. Should we accept our mortal limitations or aim towards superpower abilities for all? The endless battle between lack of ability and desire for omnipotence are here re-enacted, in the collages, like in a scene of a stage play or a frame from a comic strip where the absolutely realistic and the resolutely fantastic casually commingle. Part human and part cartoon, the subjects of Art de Vivre are an elegy to imperfection, the exaltation of error, the enactment of clumsiness; they look almost ridiculous, not quite fitting in the surroundings. Something in their life is about to go wrong. Are they flying or are they falling? If the storyline of the series is about ‘having to be in the world’ the actors must be clowns, and failure must be the recipe for their success.
As the titles of some of the individual works seem to suggest, Art de Vivre becomes a forgotten family album or a distant memory that we no longer recall. Within the play of this aesthetic of uncertainty is the ultimate alternation of Human as God at one end and Human as Fool at the other, self-assertion versus self-abnegation, action versus immobility, existence
versus the void.
Art de Vivre is a series of 42 collages (magazine cuttings on paper), each
measuring approximately 42 x 29.7cm.
Image:
Paolo Giardi
Mix-and-Match Accident Ensemble
2009
Archival inkjet print on acid free Silk Coated paper 271 g.
32,8x43,7 cm
Ed. 25 + 5 AP, signed and numbered
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Less is More
Projects regularly publishes limited editions by exhibiting artists.
The Collection of the late Mister X, or the advantages of being a collector.
26 March - 29 March, 2010
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http://www.lessismoreprojects.com
For Chic Drawing Art Fair, Less is More Projects presents an exhibition project especially adapted to the context of this fair: a showcase of contemporary drawings. Curators have responded with an unconventional exhibition that, as the title ...
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Less is More Projects
presents
The Collection of the late Mister X,
or the advantages of being a collector.
Chic Drawing Art Fair
26 - 29 March 2010
Preview and vernissage, March 25
60, rue de Richelieu
Paris 02
Curated and staged by
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.
Artists
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
Image
Iain Hector
On Every Street in Every City, 2009
Screenprint/2 colours/250gsm
70x50 cm
Courtesy of the artist
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Short biographies of the artists
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
I like your work: Phil Ashcroft
7 May - 19 June, 2010
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http://www.lessismoreprojects.com
ONE WORK ONE ARTIST
Phil Ashcroft: Yeti Over Mount Fuji (Shooting Star)
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ONE WORK ONE ARTIST
Image
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
For further information
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).
