Dazzling, Newcomb Art Gallery

 Un Monumento às Fantasias Descartadas ( A Monument to Discarded Fantasies) from Andrea Fraser is a festive introduction to the Prospect.3 show at the Newcomb Art Gallery on the Uptown Tulane campus. The site specific work is an accumulation of left over beads, baubles, clothes, feathers, garlands from the Rio Carnival and the heap of abandoned objects instills melancholy. Assuming it is intentional, the Christmas tree shaped composition refers not only to Mardi Gras but also to the quasi secular celebration taking place two months before. However, the pile of shiny, decorative, lifeless objects feels contrived. Soiled, crushed, shattered trinkets would bring spontaneity and genuineness to the installation.
Monir Farmanfarmaian's works shimmer along the walls, surrounding the center piece. The geometric wall sculptures ally the sobriety of minimalist shapes and the richness from the glitter to reach a perfect mixture of Islamic inspired motives and minimalist influence, defying all categorization. Farmanfarmaian has perfected the techniques of cut mirrors, mosaics and reverse glass painting to create the mainly monochrome, silvery works, activated by the viewer's reflection: a successful amalgam of East  and West.
In keeping with her quest, Ebony Patterson fills a room with a new body of works created for P.3. Mixing paint, beads, glitter, flowery wallpaper, she stages black bodies lying in a lush nature or overtaken by raucous celebrations. The human form dissolves in the luxurious vegetation or the party's decorations. Primal calls lead to Mardi Gras festivities or a search for paradise in a communion with nature. Paterson keeps us guessing and wandering in her celebratory landscapes.


Black is for funerals. According to Hew Locke, black is also for parades. In his site specific installation The Nameless, mythical heroes drawn with cords and beads on a starry background, come alive on the four walls of the room, encircling the visitor. Referring to our collective memory, childhood's nightmares or fairy tales, the overpowering figures (about twice my size) are a mixture of symbols, cultural and historical references like the demon with angel's wings or the Medieval warrior riding a lion. In a new world, the pageantry of semi-gods brandishes Kalashnikovs, the symbol of modern weaponery.

Each artist is presented with a concise informative wall text and if their works are influenced by diverse backgrounds, the curator found a common discussion.The exhibition  is a reference to a 1959 show organized at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Totems not Taboo, about the dichotomy of objects. 
Flawless, dazzling!


photographs by the author:

"Un Monumento ás Fantasias Descartadas" ( A Monument to Discarded Fantasies), Andrea Fraser
with on each side, wall sculptures from Monir Farmanfarmaian
"...shortly after 8- beyond the bladez", Ebony Patterson, 2014
"The Nameless", detail, Hew Locke

Back for P.3

Camille Henrot and Hew Locke , respectively featured at the New Orleans Museum of Art and at the Pérez Art Museum Miami are back to the USA for Prospect.3.


Camille Henrot


Camille Henrot is a French multimedia artist living in New York and Paris. Born in 1978, she graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and was noticed in 2005 after an exhibition at the Cartier Foundation.
A prolific multi-disciplinary artist, known for her video clips, her work includes sculptures, drawings, photographs and displays on computers through which she translates her fascination with symbols of the past, myths which she reinterprets for a modern time.
She combines anthropology, philosophy, literature, history in her multicultural view of the world.
She participated to the Paris Triennale and was recently awarded the "Silver Lion" at the Venice Biennale with her video Grosse Fatigue.

The New Orleans Museum of Art presented her fist solo exhibition in the United States with Cities of Ys at the end of 2013.

Her work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Chisenhale Gallery in London, the Centre Pompidou, the Louvre, the Musée d’Art Moderne, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the New Orleans Museum of Art, Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, and the New Museum in New York. In 2013, she was the recipient of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington, DC, where she produced the video Grosse Fatigue awarded by the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Camille Henrot currently has a solo exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, which will travel to Bétonsalon – Centre for art and research, Paris and the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster. She is nominated for the 2014 Hugo Boss Prize. Camille Henrot is represented by kamel mennour, Paris; Johann König, Berlin; and Metro Pictures, New York. 

Hew Locke

Hew Locke was born in 1959 in Edinburgh to a British mother and a Guyanese father, both of them artists. Locke lived in Scotland until 1966 when the family moved by boat to Guyana, a former British colony on the Caribbean coast of South America. He earned a B.A. in fine art from Falmouth School of Art and Design (now Falmouth University) in 1988 and a M.A. in sculpture from the Royal College of Art in 1994. He currently lives and works in London. Through a wide range of media including painting, drawing, photography, relief, fabric, sculpture, casting, found objects and collage, Locke developed his practice which  first was misread as folk art and has now reached its full impact. Through his works, Locke tackles diverse subjects like globalization, colonization, immigration, power, trade, architecture, history. His ambivalent relationship with the British monarchy is treated with humor in House of Windsor, ultimately engaging in a reflection about power.    
Despite the variety of materials he employs, Locke regards all of his art as interconnected—“like DNA,” he explains, “it loops and twists around.”
His recent installation For Those in Peril on the Sea, (2011) at the Perez Art Museum Miami reflected the longstanding place of boats in Locke’s iconography.

Selected shows include  National Portrait Gallery (London), El Museo de Bario (New York),  Fondation Clément (Martinique), The Bell House (Prague), Kunsthal KAdE (Netherlands), Tate Britain (London), V&A Museum (London), The New Art Gallery (Walsall), Rivington Place (London), The Bluecoat Gallery (Liverpool), The British Museum (London), The New Art Exchange (Nottingham), The Luckman Gallery (LA), The New York Museum of Art and Design (New York), Atlanta Contemporary Arts (US) and at The Brooklyn Museum (New York).  In 2010 Locke's work, Sikandar, was shortlisted for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square (London).

Locke's work is represented in many collections including The Government Art Collection (UK), Miami Art Museum (US), The Tate Gallery (UK), The Arts Council of England (UK), The Collection of Eileen and Peter Norton (US), The Brooklyn Museum (New York), The Arnold Lehman Collection (US), The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (US), Kansas City Collection (US), The RSID Museum (Rhode Island), The New Art Gallery (Walsall), The Victoria & Albert Museum Drawing Collection (London), The British Museum (London) and The Henry Moore Institute (Leeds).

Meet the artist at Tate
represented by Hales Gallery


photographs by the author

 Detail of the installation "The Descendants of Pirogue", 2013, from Camille Henrot at the NOMA
Detail of the installation " For Those in Peril on the Sea", 2011, from Hew Locke at the Pérez Museum of Art Miami