Annette Messager

 

Marian Goodman gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition by Annette Messager, which will be open from the 5th September until 10th October. On show will be two new works produced between 2008 and 2009.

 

On the ground floor the artist will present A corps perdu, 2009; a collection of large black and white photographs have been printed on parachute canvas and covered with black tulle netting. They move and float; the images appearing gradually; each is connected to a small engine controlled by a computer program.

 

Annette Messager says of her work A corps perdu: ” I started to think about this piece a long time before I began making it. Various retrospectives of my work have given me the desire to work with photography which I had not done since 1998. I have used negatives that I made a long time ago, for the most part hitherto unused; photos of babies, adults and elderly people. The children have grown up and I have lost touch with most of them, former students and missing people… However all these fragments of body parts and faces, this recomposed multiplicity, constitute my memory; they are my portrait today. The forms touch, lift themselves up, together or simultaneously, are animated then subside and wither, and then they rise up again, a ballet of desires performed wholeheartedly… I would like to breathe new life into them, give them breath even though they are covered with a black veil - " presence of the absence " - (cf. Roland Barthes)". Annette Messager, 2009.

 

In addition to this large installation, Cœur au repos, 2009, is lying isolated on the ground.

 

In the basement, Et range ta chambre, 2007, is an installation which consists of numerous elements. Black cords are suspended on two walls on which are pinned badges featuring original drawings by the artist. Various objects have been added to create architectural forms; a tree made out of skaï (imitation leather), characters, all produced between 2007 and 2009.

 

 

 

Now most of my badges are fixed to black ropes and evenly pinned to the wall; either fixed to bundles of fabric to various objects, or waiting in cardboard boxes. At the same time, the other elements made in black skaï have been added to these badges, objects without age, without use, suspended or left on the ground, little cars, beds, broken puppets, for an untidy room. " Annette Messager, 2009.

 

Annette Messager’s work has been exhibited widely and can be found in prestigious collections both public and private in France and abroad. Her solo exhibition has recently closed at the Hayward Gallery, London. The exhibition « The Messengers » was created by and was first shown at the Centre Pompidou in 2007 and has toured to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea; The Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, The Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland.

 

Annette Messager was awarded the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennal in 2005.

 

Recent group shows in 2009 include: La Force de l’art 2, Palais de la Découverte, Paris ; Une image peut en cacher un autre, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris ; Elles@centrepompidou, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Parade and Procession: here comes everybody, Parasol Unit Foundation, London ; Libertad, Igualdad, Fraternidad, Zaragosse, Madrid ; Silences, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg, France and after at Musée/ Fondation Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal. In 2008, The Puppet Show, Institute of Contemporary Art University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA / Santa Monica Museum of Art, California, USA / Contemporary Museum of Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, en 2008 ; WACK!, Art and the Feminist Revolution, MOCA, Los Angeles, in 2007. In 2008 she took part in the Liverpool Biennal and the Festival d’Automne, Paris in collaboration with G. Pesson. In autumn 2009 her work will be presented at the Moscow Biennal; in an exhibition that will be shown at the ESSL collection in Vienna and also included in the Guggenheim Project, Guggenheim Museum in New York; in 2010 she will take part in the exhibition Seven deadly Sins in Fine Art, Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland.

 

Three solo exhibitions are also programmed in Warsaw, in Moscow and at the Marco in Monterrey (Mexico) in 2010.