Cars & Bikes
May 21 – July 10, 2010
Dark Matter
Luc Mattenberger’s solo exhibition
May 21 – July 10, 2010
Rue de l’Arquebuse 25
CH-1204 Genève
analix [at] forever-beauty.com
Cars & Bikes
May 21 – July 10, 2010
After men’s beauty (Handsome, 2006, in collaboration with Gianni Romano) and men’s labor (Working Men, 2008, in collaboration with Paul Ardenne), Analix Forever gallery is creating still another very masculine exhibition centered on cars and bikes; esthetic and sexual objects fully integrated in our history, dreams and world.
Once ejected from the uterus, their first vehicle, this primitive means of transport in which they swayed while discovering the pleasure of a warm, effortless and safe trip, children and men will share a single dream: the dream of creating a comparable adventure. Thereupon, they will start building bodyworks even finer, lighter, stronger and tougher than the woman’s body: admire the glow, caress the curves… Appreciate Tuomo Manninen’s Car Show 2, these cars buried under the snow suggesting soft breasts with nipples that sometimes carelessly come out of their milky environment…
Further appreciate Robert Montgomery’s truck with angel wings, Angel, in front of the gallery during the opening. We also have to analyze the engine – as the engine is life itself. Men’s unlimited interest in understanding how both work, is illustrated by Patrick Weidmann’s explorations, when he infinitely expands parts of his engines as if he was trying to gain possession of their secrets. This fascination is also represented in Thomas Lindvig’s wrecked car – as the crash is an inherent part of the pleasure found in automobiles.
For Luc Mattenberger, engine rimes with burning and inexhaustible passion. He worships the noise, the smell, the shape and the function. His Excavatrice bicylindre four beats seams only to wait for his master who will turn it on again.
Motorbikes have a huge advantage over cars: they are bisexual. They combine the dynamic of a man’s sex, to the gentleness of feminine curves. They are fiercely aerodynamic and fly like Andrea Mastrovito’s paper Ducati Desmosedici, leaving behind a delicate red-hot trail. They count many phallic extensions, such as the exhaust pipes, and they know how to leap and roar like a warrior and his horse. But they also have a conveniently accessible engine that can be explored with eyes and hands at any given time, as Xavier Veilhan invites us to do.
Motorcycles are capable of making us nostalgic of fusion like nothing else. This fusion is expressed in Elisabetta Benassi’s video, Time Code: fusion between the woman who drives and the man who follows, between Pasolini and Benassi, between time and cultures, words and images, gender and generation. Fusion again between the mythical dark knight, as much metallic as he is delicate, and the animal. Shaun Gladwell’s video, Apologies 1 – 6, shows the fusion between life and death, an existential fusion that a car could never reveal.
Cars & Bikes is a modest tribute to mechanical beauty constantly reflected in our lives and in our dreams.
With art works from:
Elisabetta Benassi (Italy)
Shaun Gladwell (Australia)
Thomas Lindvig (Denmark)
Tuomo Manninen (Finland)
Andrea Mastrovito (Italy)
Luc Mattenberger (Switzerland)
Robert Montgomery (UK)
Xavier Veilhan (France)
Patrick Weidmann (Switzerland)
This exhibition is part of OFF in the 50 JPG program.
With the support of Videosystems, Geneva.
Opening: May 20th 2010 from 6 pm
(In parallel to the opening of Dark Matter, Luc Mattenberger’s first solo show at Analix Forever).
Exhibitions open from May 21st to July 10th, 2010
Tuesday to Saturday, from 2 pm to 7 pm or by appointment
Dark Matter
Luc Mattenberger’s solo exhibition
May 21 – July 10, 2010
For his first solo exhibition at Analix Forever, Luc Mattenberger offers to take over the gallery’s area with a new installation that will guide us through time flow, space, and of course, machines. Machines that can both help to straighten what time has loosened, and loosen what men have straightened. Mattenberger, who Paul Ardenne describes as a “transcendental mechanic”, is also interested in the physics behind every link, specifically between dark matter and light.
On the occasion of Dark Matter, we will have the pleasure to present No country for Engines, a monograph on Luc Mattenberger edited by the AHEAD FOUNDATION, along with texts from Paul Ardenne and Irene Hofmann, and an interview of the artist by Giovanni Carmine.
“In the provided set of artistic works exploiting “machines”, Luc Mattenberger’s distinct approach is famous for a particular reason: his standpoint remains ambiguous as he shifts between both the love and the mistrust of technique, and between the excitement machines generate and the price to pay for technology.” (Paul Ardenne)
Luc Mattenberger is also participating to the collective exhibition Cars & Bikes, with his Excavatrice, a motionless motorbike nonetheless ready to release its fierce horsepower and tear apart both the ground and the ceiling. The Excavatrice, which seems to be solely waiting for a brave hand to spin its wheels again, evokes the mythical biker, vulnerable beast of modern times, potential victim of the myth he embodies, and of his permanent battle with the machine.
Opening: Thursday May 20, from 6 pm
(In parallel to the opening of Cars & Bikes).
Exhibitions open from May 21 to July 10, 2010,
Tuesday to Saturday, from 2 pm to 7 pm, and by appointment.
Image above:
Tuomo Manninen
Car Show 2, 2010
60 x 90 cm, d-print
Courtesy of the artist and Analix Forever, Geneva
