Plages

Plages

Group show in London and Paris

Monika Baer / Marc Camille Chaimowicz / Sarah Charlesworth / Isabelle Cornaro / Liz Deschenes / Willem de Rooij / Nathalie du Pasquier / Louise Lawler / Nick Mauss / Marisa Merz / Amy Sillman / Cheyney Thompson

Plages brings together artists that meditate on the place of the subject in the marking of a space. The works explore different vision instruments through which we approach everyday objects, and therefore our distance towards them, and the opposition between private space and exhibition space through premeditated patterns that discuss the idea of functionality. Besides its usual translation as beach, the French term Plage is a broad notion that indicates the perimeter of a space, a time lapse or the latitude between two elements - in this case public/private, home/business, decorative/functional. 

By pointing out the history of object production and everyday material culture, artists such as Sarah Charlesworth, Monika Baer, Louise Lawler, Isabelle Cornaro and Marisa Merz reframe overlooked, ordinary objects and question their purpose as consumption, design, or admiration as well as setting a new distance between subject and object, foreground and background. The displacement of domestic objects often takes the form of a renewed artistic appropriation.

The continuity between a domestic space and the exhibition space can also be addressed through the emancipation of design from taste limitations and functional demands. By radicalizing design-based techniques, the work of artists like Nick Mauss, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Nathalie du Pasquier and Willem de Rooij can channel multiple historical references and readapt the painterly vocabulary of modernism. Cheyney Thompson’s interpretation and intentional distortion of reproductive techniques can take the shape of repetitive patterns that delineate the exhibition area in a suite of canvases.