LA Existancial

16 January 2013 – 3 March 2013

LACE is honored to announce LA Existancial , organized by curator Marie de Brugerolle, an ambitious group exhibition that brings together international artists across generations to explore the legacy of Guy de Cointet. Brugerolle's project is based on Cointet's Cizeghoh Tur NDJMB (1973), a portfolio of 12 serigraphs (red letters on white) created in Los Angeles and realized in France. This portfolio, written in a coded language, was the stage-prop of his first performance in 1973 at the Paris Sonnabend Gallery.

LA Existancial is a double exploration of Los Angeles as myth as well as a site of cinema and crime. Formally, the works will engage multiple aspects of "folding-unfolding" a story, to explore different post-performative possibilities. Like Cointet's piece, each artist's respective works will have more than one status: a wall drawing is also a poster; a drawing can be also a script; a mailed letter becomes a map; a carpet is a score; and a window blind is a poem that can be sung.

Brugerolle has selected an impressive, multigenerational roster of artists, which includes: John Baldessari (US), Julien Bismuth & Jean-Pascal Flavien (F), Simon Bergala (F), Sophie Bonnet-Pourpet (F), Elsa Bourdot & Clara Gensburger (F), Andrea Fraser (US), Dora Garcia (Spain), Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly (US), Morten Norbye Halvorsen & Jessica Warboys (Norway), Emily Mast (US), Jimmy Robert(F), Mickaël Salvi (F), Benjamin Seror (F), Lucille Uhlrich (F) and Veridiana Zurita (Brazil).

OPENING RECEPTION PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Ongoing: Marie de Brugerolle, The Colors of the Day
Ongoing: Dora Garcia, The Sphinx and Prayers
7:15PM (VIP Reception)  Benjamin Seror, Mime radio, chapter XII
7:50PM  Mickael Salvi, The Student Has Surpassed the Master
8:00PM  Guy de Cointet, Espahor ledet ko uluner !
8:30PM  Guy de Cointet, The dog story
8:50PM Julien Bismuth & Jean-Pascal Flavien, A Wake
9:10PM Brennan Gerard & Ryan Kelly, RECTO/VERSO

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Marie de Brugerolle is an art historian, curator, and professor at the National School of Fine Arts of Lyon (ENSBA) and Fine Art School of Art and Design (HEAD) in Geneva. She organized the first retrospective exhibition of Guy de Cointet (1934-1983) at the MAMCO in Geneva in 2004 and has situated his works with the likes of Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley and Catherine Sullivan at the CRAC (Sète, 2006). As the premiere Guy de Cointet scholar and author of numerous articles on the artist, de Brugerolle published the first Cointet monograph published in 2011 and directed the award-winning documentary film Who's That Guy? (2011) which tours Europe and the US. She restaged de Cointet's Tell Me at the Tate Modern in 2007, as well as Five Sisters, which tours in Europe and North America.

Other curatorial projects have included Out of Limits: Art and Life (adjunct curator, Centre Pompidou/MNAM), a film program for the Bruce Nauman retrospective (MOMA, 1995). At the CNCA-Le Magasin in Grenoble, France (1996), she curated the first Allen Ruppersberg retrospective, and co-curated with Paul McCarthy And Gravity -- a tribute to Bas Jan Ader, Wolfgang Stoerchele and Guy de Cointet. She organized a Baldessari retrsopective (Carré d'Art, Nîmes, 2005), Not to Play With Dead Things (Villa Arson, Nice, 2008), a retrospective of Larry Bell in 2010, and I Was a Male Yvonne de Carlo with Dora Garcia (Musac de Leon, 2011-12). She is currently preparing All That Falls! with the psychoanalyst Gérard Wajcman.

LA Existancial is part of Ceci n'est pas...Art Between France and Los Angeles, an unprecedented and diverse five-month series of Franco-American contemporary art collaborations across Los Angeles starting ending in April 2013.  Gathering more than 30 cultural institutions and projects, and over one 100 artists, Ceci n'est pas...will take place in public and non-profit spaces, galleries, museums, art fairs, and universities  from the Pacific Coast to downtown to the Hollywood Hills. More at cnp-la.org/

SUPPORT
Support for LA Existancial is granted by L'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (ENSBA), the France Los Angeles Exchange Foundation (FLAX), Etant Donnes: The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art and Ceci n'est pas...Art Between France and Los Angeles.

 LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)