ARLES: LUMA Foundation and Les Rencontres de la Photographie

Text and Images by Coco Dolle

LUMA Arles Foundation

Frank Gehry’s tower in LUMA Arles, commissioned by Maja Hoffman, 2021.

Frank Gehry’s tower in LUMA Arles, commissioned by Maja Hoffman, 2021.

The fairly new contemporary art foundation LUMA Arles has taken the spotlight in the magnificent and historical town of Arles in Provence, France. This impressive architecture is the creative project of Swiss collector Maja Hoffman, heiress of the Laboratoire Roche. Descending from a long lineage of art collectors, Maja was partially raised in Arles, and has forged a special connection with the city of Van Gogh over the years. 

Set at the entrance to the town in an old rail yard factory, the foundation’s main building was designed by world-renowned designer Frank Gehry. Its stainless steel tower forms an intricate structure of mirrored impressions merging with the infinite blues of the sky. Upon entering the building, visitors are welcomed with a large-scale video presentation of Gehry’s vision. In his interview, he explains that his design aimed to both pay homage and reflect the symbolic of the Roman’s arena and the famous swirls in the painterly work of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Further at different museum levels are featured an array of commissioned works by well established contemporary artists invested in the conversation of the future and technologies. Each are presented as permanent in-situ artworks: Philippe Parreno’s film installation No More Reality, Carsten Höller’s playful Isometric Slides, Olafur Elisasson’s rotating mirror Take your Time or Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Drum Café. 

Franz West’s sculpture in the garden of LUMA Arles designed by Frank Gehry, 2021.

Franz West’s sculpture in the garden of LUMA Arles designed by Frank Gehry, 2021.

Below on the garden level, a gigantic noodle-shaped light pink sculpture titled “Krauses Gekröse” by Franz West highly contrasts with the greens of the surrounding parks. The ground level’s main gallery then opens to the magnificent and personal collection of Maja Hoffman featuring contemporary masterpieces. Her curated exhibition “The Impermanent Display” examines the political, social and climatic transformations that we have recently experienced all over the world. Suggesting that we are in a dramatic transitional and metamorphosis stage, Maja’s collection presents monumental oeuvres including Urs Fisher’s wax piece The Rape of The Sabines, Iza Genkzen’s Nofretete and Madonna with Child, a Katharina Fritsch black madonna sculpture, a photography selection of Diane Arbus’s Archives and Paul McCarty’s Disney wood sculpture, amongst others.

In the Grande Halle, a new commission by Pierre Huygues titled After Umwelt is activated in the dark by giant led screens prompting the audience at the core of the human’s brain activity. Imagined by a brain-computer interface, this artificial imagination creates for the viewer a sense of discomfort thus with equal familiarity.

Les Rencontres de la Photographie

The main campus of LUMA is also host to other artistic events including the annual Rencontres de la Photographie. Started in the 1970s, the festival presents the new talents in contemporary photography alongside retrospectives happening in unusual places and ancient architectures around the town. The exhibition MASCULINITES was particularly significant in the way it examined the role of photography in permeating and perpetuating images of both toxic and fragile masculinities in society.

Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2021

Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2021

From the classic archetype of the male cowboy, to struggling liberation movement in gay culture, the position of men in public places holding political powers, pushing further with queer identities and allures, this exhibition presented a wide range of established and emerging artists such as Richard Avedon, Aneta Bartos, Cassils, Ana Mendieta, Herb Ritts and Wolfang Tillmans amongst others.

A quote by feminist theorist Laura Mulvey highlights the ambiguity of the constructed gender:

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”

Walking further through the streets of Arles, I visited the Louis Roederer discovery awards which were presented in an abandoned church and displayed the works of a mosaic of international emerging artists. As I came closer to the exhibition location, I realized I used to trespass that same church on hot summer nights with my teenager friends. I grew up in Provence and in my childhood evenings were spent wandering the streets in groups and walking on rooftops to get the view of the city. Within L’église des Frères Prêcheurs, Los Angeles based Tarrah Krajnak presented a series of well composed black and white photography revisiting iconic imagery in Weston’s nudes using her own body through the lens of her feminine identity. Zara Murff portrayed photo studies in urban communities facing racial inequities in American suburbs. French-Israeli Ilanit Tilouz proposed an experimental approach to natural environments and ecosystems scientific focusing on the Dead Sea. Czech artist Marie Tomanova presented the visual diary of her homecoming to her homeland after years of displacements - she also launched the publication of her new book New York New York, which I got a signed copy. This ended my beautiful journey in the world of photography and art in Arles.

NSFW: Eva Mueller Exhibition Installation

Text by Elaine Rita Mendus | Images by Coco Dolle

How do you immerse a person into a space, especially a space that does not exist? It’s a question that many artists struggle to answer, even with common spaces that anyone has access to. Many films and photographs fail to convey the place they’re depicting, even easy to reference places can be poorly represented and take the audience out of the scene.

However, Eva Mueller and Man Parrish have managed to, temporarily, recreate a bygone space and era in a basement performance space in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. SPERM. is a visceral, physical experience that takes the audience back to the hot, sticky, and primal energy of gay night life events hosted at The Cock, an iconic gay bar in the East Village, during the 1990s. Mueller’s work not only evokes the past through the visual, it uses physical, audio, and even scent cues to take the attendant back to this forgotten past.

GoGo dancer Brian B, producer Man Parrish and photographer Eva Mueller at the opening event of SPERM. at Art Club, May 2021. Image credit David Mandel, 2021

GoGo dancer Brian B, producer Man Parrish and photographer Eva Mueller at the opening event of SPERM. at Art Club, May 2021. Image credit David Mandel, 2021

The immersive installation was hosted at Art Club, curated by Joseph Latimore. Upon entry, I was greeted by a strange sight post 2020. No masks. Everyone was mask free, yet vaccinated. As someone with both of my COVID vaccines under my belt, it was a breath of fresh air. At this point, mask-free spaces seemed as much of a relic of the past as the place SPERM. sought to re-create. 

Art Club’s ceiling is as irreverent as the maskless patrons themselves, with a sacreligious rendition of Christian heaven. RuPaul takes the place of Adam in the Sistine Chapel, God replaced with the gaping maw of a sex doll. Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate infamy has had his face plastered upon the body of an angel, and Shoko Asahara sits next to him with a crown on. Directly ahead of me and past the bar lies the entrance of SPERM. it is a back room concealed by a trashbag black tarp with a stylized sperm on it. It is in here, where we are taken back from the hellscape that is the COVID-19 era to the primal, animalistic space that is The Cock’s sex parties.

Mueller and Parrish worked together to bring back the space from the dead. Parrish’s six-hour playlist of songs that he would play during his tenure as the creator and producer of SPERM. at The Cock provide the audio ambience necessary. Don’t expect to be jarred or confused by any of these songs pumping through the speakers and brought back to 2021. You’re in a free, wild, animalistic space in New York City.

Mueller’s photographs, models, and performers pepper the space. Go-go dancers gyrate their hips, while engorged cocks are an omnipresent showpiece. Visitors are led through tight spaces, an adequate replacement for the corridors of sweaty male flesh, into the main room. This provocative maze is supplemented by Mueller’s photographs of some of The Cock’s decadence.

Upon entering the main space, the visitor is greeted by a wall of profanity spray painted in orange and lime green neons.  Many of these words, like fag and tranny, are slurs that would be thrown at gay men. It feels like a bold reclamation of slurs and pejoratives that were used to defame and humiliate the men who would visit this space.

The main space doubles as a dance floor, complete with a bartender and party favors. Champagne flows and bodies gyrate together in a hedonistic Bacchanalia. Mueller and Parrish have given us a glimpse back at an era that seems far too distant from our own.

However, it is an optimistic piece. We are not encouraged to mourn the loss of Sperm. or to yearn for its heyday. Rather, the attendant leaves Sperm. with a sense of optimism. The Summer of New York City that politicians seem so desperate to create seems possible. It seems tangible. It’s going to be carnal and primal, as well.

- Elaine Rita Mendus, 2021.

FRIEZE New York 2021: A New Art Fair Experience

Text and images by Coco Dolle.

With a much expected return to an in-person art world experience on the horizon, Frieze Art Fair gave New York a safe and fresh new start. The event was hosted within the magnificent architecture of The Shed in Hudson Yards. 

Upon arrival on this windy day, I was greeted by security guards who demanded proof of vaccination or recent, negative test. After I showed both proofs, I could pass. Once inside and away from the Hudson River breeze, I had to wait in the space until 11:00 AM when the fair opened with a latte to warm me up. I was the first in-line and the first to enter the fair. Most dealers and booth managers were still sipping on their coffee, bathing in morning light.

The first floor presented the pool of major blue chip galleries. Upon entering, an installation piece by Olafur Eliasson staged a vanishing point to set the tone at Tanya Bonakdar gallery. Goodman gallery showed work by Shirin Neshat. Hauser & Wirth focused on the pioneer female artists' trio with Simone Leigh, Cindy Sherman and Louise Bourgeois. White Cube presented a luscious series of lip paintings by LA based conceptual artist Kaari Upson. Casey Kaplan lined up large canvases by up and coming abstract painter Caroline Kent. Gagosian Gallery unusually ventured on an only woman dynamic duo of oil paintings and ceramic sculptures respectively by Ewa Juszkiewicz and Rachel Feinstein. Both showcased strong female figures and portraits. I was particularly happy to revisit Rachel’s “Bandleader” ceramic, inspired by the Victoria Secret’s Angels, from her past solo show at the Jewish Museum in New York last season. Further down, Galerie Perrotin brought its power signature artist Daniel Arsham while Marian Goodman surprised us with a poetic installation by France’s long-time darling artist Annette Messager. Franklin Parrish gallery presented pleasantly text-based artist Ricci Albanda.

The second floor opened with a totem sculpture at PPOW Gallery by Guadalupe Maravilla along with the gallery’s queer staple artists including Erin M.Riley and Carlos Alejandro Motta. Other highlights include, Half Gallery presenting a mosaic of emerging artists, Andrew Edlin Gallery presenting a variety of their portfolio including Terence Koh and Henry Darger, soft sculptures by Hein Koh at Andrew Kreps and finally a royal installation by Karen Kimlimnik at galerie Eva Presenhuber.

In the frame section, solo booths made the headline. I was particularly charmed by Ina Archer’s presentation of her “Lincoln Film Conspiracy'' at Microscope Gallery. The third floor had three nonprofits shared a booth, Printed Matter, Queens Museum, Skowhegan Art School showcasing multiple prints including Christina Quarle’s magnificent lovers’ embrace. Finally, my tour ended with a beautiful Gabriel Orozco at Kuri Manzutto.

Overall, the fair experience felt really safe and reassuring, both physically and visually. For once, I wasn’t oversaturated upon exiting the fair. Although I was taken by surprise when my QR code was to be scanned on my way out again. Which means no more sneaking into the fine art world as a tourist, no one will be there by mistake again. The art world shall be for professionals and insiders, or not.

Mrs. Gallery: Sara Maria Salamone & Tyler Lafreniere's Little Art Heaven & Damien Davis' exhibition

Text and images by Coco Dolle.

Nested on a sunny residential street in Maspeth, Queens NY, Mrs. Gallery is an elegant exhibition space with a strong program and community following much in the vain of the cutting edge’s Lower East Side.

It’s Easter Saturday and I made my appointment. I biked over from Greenpoint listening to Mazzy Star album, feeling a sense of freedom as I was crossing industrial areas, alone on those wide empty roads. I’ve meant to come visit the gallery much sooner as Sara and Tyler have been fellow artists and parents . I used to meet them mornings on the way to elementary school at drop off. At nights, I would see them at gallery openings and local trendy bars. We actually lived two doors apart on the same block and also sat on the same stoops! I was happy to finally visit their unique homey gallery space.

The exhibition on view “WEIGHTLESS” displayed colorful and attractive sculptural works by artist Damien Davis. The artist created these works as an ode to Mae Jemison, the first Black woman to travel into space. Wall sculptures in the form of spaceships mounted with symbology reminiscent of Egyptian figurines and African diasporas, are juxtaposed with chains and metal bolts to recall the violence of the transatlantic slave trade. Damien reclaims symbolic emblems of the past in order to understand their connection to the present. A must see exhibition and installation!.

“Weigthless” by Damien Davis, On view till May 8, 2021.

Mrs. Gallery, 60-40 56th Drive, Queens, NYC

All photo images by Coco Dolle.