With Some Boarded up Houses (Chicago) from the eponymous series started in 2009 in the States Joachim Koester brings together Walker Evans, the emblematic photographer of the Great Depression, and Bernd and Hilla Becher, the masters of objective photography. Formally, the series borrows its language from the Bechers’ famous “typologies”: frontal treatment of the architectural element, taken from a high view point with the neutral light of an open sky, no human presence etc. However, contrary to the Bechers and in line with Walker Evans’ approach, the houses photographed by Joachim Koester are psychologically charged, haunted by the subprime crisis that saw millions of people lose their home. Noting that our current mortgage-based economy has become much more abstract, Koester suggests that ‘maybe the boarded-up house can be seen as the physical manifestation of our present mode of production’ (Camera Austria n°125, 2014). Joachim Koester’s work thus goes beyond the already broad field of a conceptual, documentary and narrative approach to the social and political aspect of architecture. By seeking to decode the signs of repressed history in which the walls are impregnated, the artist acts as an explorer of the invisible, an observer of a reality inhabited by ghosts.

Produced on the occasion of the solo show The Place of Dead Roads, the limited edition Some Boarded up Houses (Chicago) echoes the exhibition itself with its wooden maze, its atmosphere describing according to Koester “a prohibited space where ghosts can meet and where chance encounters are not excluded”.

Joachim Koester is an artist born in 1962 in Copenhagen, Denmark. His works have been shown at Documenta X, Kassel; at the Johannesburg Biennale; the Kwangju Biennale; the Venice Biennale; the Busan Biennale; the Manifesta, Trento; Tate Triennial, London; Taipei Biennale, Taiwan; as well as in solo shows at Centre national de la photographie, Paris; Statens Museum for Kunst Copenhagen; CASM, Center d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; The Power Plant, Toronto; Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover; IAC,Villeurbanne; MIT, Boston; Charlottenborg Copenhagen; S.M.A.K, Ghent; and Camera Austria, Graz.

On the occasion of Pablo Bronstein’s exhibition A is Building, B is Architecture, the Centre d’Art Contemporain is delighted to present two new limited editions by the artist. Through drawing, sculpture, video and performance, Pablo Bronstein is interested in the links between classical architecture and contemporary urbanism, between settings and decors, between art and dance. His work often combines references to history of architecture- from the Roman antiquity and the Baroque to Neo-classicism and Post-modernism, as well as hints to history of art – from the Renaissance to the Modern period.

With this edition, Pablo Bronstein pursue his interest for silverware – from which he is an occasional collector – with an etching representing a pair of sugar casters. This is an exceptional opportunity to collect a work by an artist whose work is included in major public and private collections worldwide, including Tate Collection, London; Collection Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich; Graphische Sammlung / Collection of Prints and Drawings at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich and Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York.

Pablo Bronstein (Buenos Aires, 1977) lives and works in London. Solo shows include Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2011), Sculpture Court, Tate Britain, London (2010) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2009), Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich (2007).

Pablo Bronstein has also participated in part in numerous collective exhibitions such as “Tate Live: Performance Room” at Tate Modern, London (2012), “MOVE: Choreographing You” Hayward Gallery, London, Haus der Kunst, Munich and K20, Dusseldorf (2010-2011), “The Garden of Forking Paths” at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich. Pablo Bronstein has participated in Manifesta 8 (2010-2011), Performa 07, The Second Biennial of Visual Arts, New York (2007) and at the Tate Triennale, Tate Britain, London (2006). His books “Postmodern Architecture in London” (2007) “Ornamental Designs” (2008) and Gilded Keyholes (2013) have been published by Walther König Books.

This edition has been conceived and produced by Gianni Piacentino for his retrospective at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. The iconography is inspired by the beginnings of aviation and the Wright Brothers (“WB” in the title), it recalls his first paintings from the 1970s. It is the first edition by Gianni Piacentino. Each piece was hand-painted by the artist.

Born in Coazze (Turin) in 1945, Gianni Piacentino’s work has been shown in several museums in Europe, such as the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna or the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst Bremen and the Museum am Ostwall of Dortmund. The artist also exhibited at the MoMA Ps1 in New York and at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles.

The installation refers to the café-concert scene in Paris at the end of the 19th century. These shows celebrated new styles of dance, notably the «epileptic dance» and the «cakewalk» dance, very popular during this period. The film “Contagious!” re-enacts dances by Aida Walker, by Polaire, by Eugénie Fougère and by Jane Avril on the stage of a contemporary club.

These dances have been described as “displays of strangeness”. In colonial Paris they embodied the idea of “difference”, loss of control, irrationality and disorder and imitated in an exaggerated manner, and subsequently corrupted, what was considered “feminine” and “foreign”.

The title of the installation “Contagious!” stems from a very popular idea at the end of the 19th century that one risked contamination through the sole imitation of movements.

Doctors maintained for example that they had inherited certain of their patients’ twitches and mannerism. The philosopher Paul Souriau also saw in these dance shows the risk of a mimetic and unconscious imitation of their movements by viewers.

In her film “Contagious!” the two performers Arantxa Martinez et Vaginal Davis re-enact two historical figures: Polaire, famous for his “epileptic dance” style, sexually aggressive, and the New Yorker Aida Walker, celebrated in Paris for her interpretation of the «cakewalk» – a dance invented by Afro-American slaves at the beginning of the 19th century which mocked the dances the slaves’ masters, such as the minuet for example.

The 11 photographs that are part of the installation “Contagious!” display excerpts of the three volumes of the “Iconographie de la Salpêtrière” published by Charcot from 1878 onwards, juxtaposed with images of popular poses and gestures from the “epileptic dance” and “cakewalk”.

The composition of the serigraphy – colour blocs around a cross – relates to a certain tradition of geometric abstraction and notably Swiss concrete art. If “nothing is more concrete than a line, a colour, a surface” (Theo van Doesburg, 1930), the literal quality in question differs from that of abstract painting. The pattern reproduced originates from a wide spread industrial technique. It is a cromalin print, a high definition colour reproduction used as a validation for documents during the printing that can be find in packaging and notably on cigarette packets.

Produced by the artist in the printing studio of the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam with precise colour mixes (oil painting), the print has a tautological character yet claims its hand-crafted quality.

The rippling and fingerprints related to the manipulation of the different blocs of colour are fully assumed by the artist.

• 4 colored circles with golden cross and brown rim (10 copies)
• 4 colored circles with blue cross and brown rim (3 copies)
• 3 colored circle (no gold) with red cross and brown rim (2 copies)
• 4 colored circles, with blue cross, no rim (3 copies)
• 4 colored circles with golden cross, no rim (1 copy)
• 3 colored circles (no blue) with golden cross, no rim (1 copy)
• 1 red circle with red cross, no rim (2 copies)

Gavin Turk, a member of the « Young British Artists » (a group that includes among others Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and the Chapman brothers), explores notions of authenticity and identity that relate to the modernist and avant garde questioning of a “myth” of the artist and the “paternity” of a work of art.

This edition re-uses the recurrent motif in his work of the trash bag, for which he was awarded the Jack Goldhill Sculpture Prize in 2001 by the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In this case however, the trash bag is not rendered as a sculpture (‘Bag’), but as a photograph and printed as a sticker. Justifying his interest for this object the artist explains that : “a piece of rubbish on the street contains within it cultural stories – stories of use, of its production, of its being thrown away – the stories that this bin bag can tell are stories about who we are and how we live.”

“I don’t like things to be thrown away. Not that I’m nostalgic, particularly, but I do think it’s quite nice to change the temporal nature of things to try to understand what the things are. To have any experience of time – to understand that we wake up tomorrow or we woke up this morning – is to be a time traveller.