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Email PageFuck Architects: Chapter 1
October 19, 2007- November 24, 2007
Reception: October 19, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Mounir Fatmi
Lombard-Freid Projects
531 W 26th St Mounir Fatmi Underneath (installation view) (2007) |
"My father has lost all his teeth, now I can bite him.” It was with this phrase and a series of horse jumps, that Mounir Fatmi physically blocked the entryway to the "Africa Remix" exhibition at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris in 2005. The public was forced to pass through the bars of the sculpture in order to reach the exhibition. For the viewer, the problem was no longer how to see an artwork, but how to leave it. Thus one begins to understand that despite its aesthetic side, the work of Mounir Fatmi often functions like a trap.
For his debut show at the gallery, Fatmi presents several new works under the title, Fuck Architects: Chapter 1. This project functions as a book comprised of three chapters with NY as its inaugural site. The second installment will be shown in the exhibition Le Creux de l’Enfer at the Center of Contemporary Art in Thiers (France) and the third and final chapter will be exhibited in the 2008 Havana Biennial (Cuba).
The “architects" in the title alludes to such forces in our society as religion/God, politicians and the role reality and simulacra play in our lives. Several questions are posed: how to resist the fascination that lies within the machine of spectacle and accept “true reality”?; who are these architects who construct our environment and can change our perception of everyday life?
Upon entering the gallery one is immediately confronted by Obstacles, a sculpture made out of wood poles usually used as bars in horse jumps. Their placement within the space forces the visitor to navigate around them in order to enter the gallery. In many ways Fatmi’s Obstacles can be read as “conversation starters or props for opening dialogue”. They were presented in different institutional venues in recent years and under different configurations, becoming a recurrent theme in Fatmi’s work.
Skyline (2007) is a reflection of such modern cities as Tokyo, New York, Dubai and Johannesburg, which the artist has visited over the years. Using blank VHS tapes to literally build up his fictitious cityscape, Fatmi’s Skyline becomes a poetic frieze of recent urban histories. Voided of details, the minimalist aesthetic of this sculpture captures the homogenous nature of contemporary mega-cities that are becoming copies of one another. The black tape that is pulled out and streams beneath the VHS cassettes becomes their forgotten memories and their history in flux.
Crutches is a floor to ceiling sculpture built up from intertwined crutches of varying size. An object that typically functions as a form of support has been transformed into a precarious structure. One could recall Salvador Dali’s painting Sleep (1937) where a huge disembodied head hangs suspended by crutches over an empty landscape. Fatmi’s architectural dystopia is similarly “held up by the crutches of reality”(Dali).
Fatmi’s sculptures speak about the fear of failure and the pressure of the society over its individuals. These works are at the same time strong and vulnerable a perpetual reminder of our conflicted human nature.
Moroccan born Mounir Fatmi lives and works in Paris. His works have been exhibited in the Migros Museum für Gegenwarskunst, Zürich, Switzerland, the Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan. His most recent exhibitions include the 52nd Venice Biennial; the 8th Biennial of Sharjah, UAE; the Gwangju Biennial, Korea and the 2nd Seville Biennial, Spain. In 2008 Fatmi’s work will be included in Trace du sacré at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and Haus der Kunst, Munich.
Art Reviews of Fuck Architects: Chapter 1
| New York Times November 16, 2007 | Roberta Smith | "There are times when it seems entirely too easy to get a show in a respectable New York gallery, and Mounir Fatmi’s solo debut is one example. The title directs an unpublishable expletive at architects and by implication (according to the news release) others with the authority to design, manage or dictate existence...." |
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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Lombard-Freid Projects was last updated: 2008-10-07
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