Loris Greaud

Loris Gréaud.
CELLAR DOOR
15 April–7 June 2011

KUNSTHALLE wien
project space karlsplatz
Treitlstraße 2, 1040 Vienna
infoline +43-1-52189-33
www.kunsthallewien.at

Daily from 1 p.m. to midnight,
Sunday and Monday from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Free admission

CELLAR DOOR, a series of exhibitions and works by the young French artist Loris Gréaud, which spans several years, culminates in a glowing close at the KUNSTHALLE wien with the artist’s first solo show in Austria. Sonic Youth’s legendary guitarist Lee Ranaldo has substantially contributed to the new work presented in the exhibition. CELLAR DOOR is a contemporary fairy tale involving various interwoven and nevertheless self-contained elements: among others an architectural studio project, an opera, the film One Thousand Ways To Enter (2008–2011), and the sculpture The Book of Captions (2011). The critical understanding of the studio concept takes a central position within Gréaud’s oeuvre: it can be a room-filling installation, microcosm and macrocosm all in one—an expansively structured, rampant obsession and projection surface for thoughts and words that continuously reinvents itself. CELLAR DOOR stands for a collaborative and experimental form of production as well as for a dynamic process of art appreciation.

Gréaud’s work One Thousand Ways To Enter (2008–2011) draws on billows of smoke under water filmed by the artist. The footage was subjected to the analysis procedure of Rorschach mirror images along the lines of Gestalt psychology in post-production. Gréaud’s studio metaphor features prominently here, too: there are thousands of ways to access a studio, and this overwhelming abundance of possibilities is symbolized by the penetrating morphology of smoke. In addition, the mirror has provided a symbol of anticipation and omnipresence since antiquity. As for the soundtrack of One Thousand Ways To Enter, Gréaud asked the musician Lee Ranaldo to mentally interpret a guitar solo in a fully soundproof space at the IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris, where Ranaldo’s slightest movements occurring through the process of thinking the most beautiful imaginable piece of music would be recorded with the highest equipment standards. The recipient is confronted with himself in a Freudian unconscious desire, extending image and sound to a subjective mental projection space and completing them in his mind by endowing them with meaning.

The Great Book of Captions (2011), the second of three CELLAR DOOR works specifically developed for this exposition, is a sculptural piece comprising the captions of previous CELLAR DOOR presentations in the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the ICA (London), the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (Switzerland), and La Conservera (Murcia, Spain). Each caption appears only as long as it would hypothetically take the observer to read it—the resultant pulsating illumination with its synaesthetic suggestive power to be understood as a reference to an “archaeology of the future” (Fredric Jameson). As Loris Gréaud proclaimed, the situation he faces at this stage of his artistic carreer can be described such as in the libretto by Raymundas Malašauskas and Aaron Schuster of his CELLAR DOOR Opera; where it is said that “… In the dream of the bus attached to a truck carried by an airplane descending through the sky, I is the bus, I is the truck, I is the air-plane, I is the sky, I is descending slowly toward a point unknown, and no one is there to dream the dream.” Vienna is the city of dreams, or better to say of their analysis. In his The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) Sigmund Freud first argued that the motivation of all dream content is wish-fulfillment. Once the wish is fulfilled, that the studio is built, there is no need to dream of it anymore.

Loris Gréaud is also represented in the exhibition Outer Space. Art and a Dream at KUNSTHALLE wien in the the MuseumsQuartier (MQ) until August 15 with his sculptural film installation Bucky, The Intergalactic Draw (2007–2010) from the cycle CELLAR DOOR.

Loris Gréaud, born in Eaubonne near Paris in 1979, lives and works in France.

Curator: Cathérine Hug

Edition: An art edition by Loris Gréaud with contributions by Cathérine Hug in association with Gerald Matt has been published on the occasion of the exhibition by GREAUSTUDIO; 100 copies.

This exhibition and the book stated below are supported by INSTITUT FRANÇAIS – Ministère des Affaires étrangères et européennes, www.institutfrancais.com

Information and photographic material: Claudia Bauer, KUNSTHALLE wien, office: Museumsplatz 1, A-1070 Vienna; phone: +43-1-521 89-1222, fax: +43-1-521 89-1217, e-mail: presse@kunsthallewien.at

BOOK LAUNCH

GREAUSTUDIO and JRP RINGIER will issue a survey volume of all CELLAR DOOR projects with a comprehensive essay by the French art historian Pascal Rousseau. This volume, forthcoming on the occasion of the project’s conclusion, has been prepared jointly by the ICA (London), the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, La Conservera (Murcia), The Pace Gallery (NY), Yvon Lambert (Paris), GREAUDSTUDIO, and KUNSTHALLE wien. The book will be launched on occasion of the talk with Loris Gréaud, Lionel Bovier and further guests during Art|42|Basel at Art Salon (Hall 1, Auditorium), June 16, 2011, at 2–2.30 pm. For additional information please visit www.jrp-ringier.com

WEBSITE

greaudstudio.com

*Image above:
Courtesy: GREAUDSTUDIO, Yvon Lambert, Paris, The Pace Gallery, NYC © VBK, Wien 2011