Americans in New York Nov. 24, 2007 - Jan. 12, 2008 at the Michel Rein Gallerie

Once upon a time in America and again, once upon a time, America is eternally back as if Nietzsche was presiding over its destiny. In the contemporary landscape, the American city remains an emblematic place, at the crossroad of all kinds of encounters and attempts, a true barometre of financial and artistic activity.New York is not the capital of the USA but it is without any doubt the centre of contemporary art in the world. There is no avoiding New York, and it is unlikely it will ever lose its place in spite of what people from the outside may wish. In the metropolis, artists are coming from all parts of the world, from all corners of the USA, and emulation is what breathes energy into the New York art scene. In nowadays context one has to admit that the forces of globalisation that can be found in the art world too, paradoxically offer a wide berth to opposing cultural horizons. It is said that New York is not America, but America needs New York for its global existence. This is what this small show will try to demonstrate through a few slices of today’s art steeped in identity.

MATTHEW DAY JACKSON
Born 1974 in Panorama City (California), lives in Brooklyn, New-York.
Matthew Day Jackson's work takes the form of antimonuments that turn a critical eye on our cultural icons to address the romanticization of America's past, current political events. Inspired by the Russian Constructivist notion of "art for the proletariat", Jackson employs materials scavenged from his past, his studio, and culture at large as well as imagery culled from American history, Native American mythology, and art history. Each element, whether material or symbolic, carries a significance at once personal and universal. When brought together, they create a narrative structure that illuminates the artist's belief in the redemptive possibilities of seemingly outdated ideals.

MARC GANZGLASS
Born 1973 in Washington D.C, lives in Brooklyn, New-York.
Marc Ganzglass will present his installation "Meteorite Inclusions". Working at the Kohler plumbing manufacturing facility in Kohler, Wisconsin; I collaborated with factory chemists and technicians to embed iron fragments from the Sikhote Alin Meteorite (Siberia 1947) within a limited production run of Kohler cast iron drinking fountains. Marc Ganzglass "Meteorite Inclusions" embodies two divergent histories of iron, one story of iron formed in space and the other of iron developed here on earth, a social material. This work continues his investigation into the sublime ironies of material and industry. Its subtle, conceptual elegance immediately suggests a play on Duchamp's Urinal.

JILL MAGID
Born 1973 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, lives in New-York.
A graduate of MIT, Jill Magid was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam. She has had solo shows in various institutions around the world including the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (2003), Tate Liverpool (2004), the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (2005), Sparwasser, Berlin (2007) and the Centre D’Arte Santa Monica, Barcelona (2007). To realize “Auto Portrait Pending”, Jill Magid signs a contract with a company to become a diamond when she dies. The contract specifies the agreement for her transformation and the details of her eventual diamond. Upon her death, the diamond will be created from the carbon†of her cremated remains. It will have a round cut, weigh one carat, and be set in a gold ring setting. Until the diamond's creation, the empty ring setting, the corporate contract, the artist’s preamble, and the Beneficiary Contract constitute the artwork. Auto Portrait Pending awaits a Beneficiary.

LAUREL NAKADATE
Born 1975, lives in New-York.
“More of an exhibitionist than Madonna during one of her showcases and even more fakely innocent than Britney Spears in her “Oops I did it again” video clip, Laurel Nakadate has been exploring the stereotypes of her Asian-American feminine identity, ever since she graduated from Yale. She uses her Lolita-like body (despite her thirty years old of age) to emphasize the fantasies of the average male viewer, in a quite humorous fashion: she enters random men’s houses (in general, balding, paunchy bachelors who made a pass at her on the street) to dance with them to one of Britney’s tunes or she wears her Guide attire to have them sing a birthday song for her. In the video-based work “I Want to Be the One to Walk in the Sun” (2006), she travels across truckers’ America, from New-Orleans’ kinky hotels to Iowa’s gas stations, and confronts her Lolita character to landscapes (pole-dancing in an empty parking lot), average Americans and several animals (dressed as a French maid, she films a dog taking her leg for a mate).” Isabelle Alfonsi in « 02 », fall 2007

MIKA ROTTENBERG
Born 1976 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, lives in New-York
Mika Rottenberg creates, in her fixed or animated images, scenes and situations in which her characters play a sociological and fantasy-like theater which draws from the iconography of the fair. Her works present as a result a wunderkabinett in which labor, immigrants and especially women personify an American reality that is barely disguised. Mika Rottenberg received her MFA from Columbia University in 2004. In 2005, her video installation “Tropical Breeze” was included in “Greater New York” at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. “Mary's Cherries” (video installation, 2004) was included in “New Works/New Acquisitions” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and “Dough” (Oslo version) was included in “Uncertain States of America” at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo. “Americans in New York” will be her first show in Paris.

Americans in New York, curated by Ami Barak
with: Matthew Day Jackson, Marc Ganzglass, Jill Magid, Laurel Nakadate, Mika Rottenberg
Exhibition dates: Nov. 24, 2007-Jan. 12, 2008

Michel Rein Gallerie
www.michelrein.com
42 rue de Turenne
75003 Paris
tel: 33 1 42 72 68 13
fax: 33 1 42 72 81 94

Metro : Saint-Paul
Hours : 04 pm - 09pm
Mail: galerie@michelrein.com

Free entrance