I flew half way around the world, from California to the French Riviera. Why?? You’d be very right to ask. The weather is just as great, the food a bit better but the same Le Grand Bleu experience awaits. If you must know, I went there because of…soccer! Along the way I explored many museums and countless foundations. One of them is Fondation Carmignac, on the island of Porquerolles. A corporate foundation created in 2000 by Edouard Carmignac, it boasts a colorful contemporary art collection and supports the Photojournalism Award which rewards an investigative reportage each year. Nested on the island of Porquerolles, the vistas are breathtaking. Enjoyed during an artful treasure hunt in the gardens where monumental site-specific sculpture installations are scattered, Mediterranean landscapes also come round from the gallery space, perfectly framed by ribbon windows à la Le Corbusier. I found it impossible to resist the azur of the Mediterranean sky set against the delicate greens of shrubs and pines. Porquerolles being an island, the water theme is omnipresent in both the architecture of the Fondation space and the artworks in the collection. The movie The Big Blue comes to mind often, particularly as the open skylight of […]
No wonder Junya Ishigami started with architecture firm SANAA. His architectural projects have a similar organic character you will probably recognized if you’ve read my previous blog post on Grace Farms, CT. Fondation Cartier pour l’ Art Contemporain currently offers an exquisite exhibition of Junya Ishigami’ s preparatory models, which are all works of art in their own right. If you are fascinated by new architecture or simply curious, rush to the exhibition to check it out. All models capture Junya Ishigami’s incessant quest to push back the limits of what is possible to build and how to build it. Yet what strikes me the most is how visually unique each architectural solution appears, as if Ishigami’s style was constantly reinventing itself, feeding off Nature’s infinite plurality of forms and shapes. Let me highlight a few projects to give you a flavor of what is displayed at the Cartier Foundation but if you can, go and check it out for yourself before September 9, 2018.
Visiting the Heavenly Bodies exhibition straight from a red-eye flight was equivalent to waking up in art and fashion heaven. And I got blessed being the first one in, meaning my pictures are relatively crowd-free compared to what you can see elsewhere. So seek the limelight, walk the red carpet, your eyes might even see some angels! Spanning both the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 5th Avenue and their Cloisters location perched on the highest point of Manhattan, Heavenly Bodies is truly a visual tour-de-force. Let’s face it, if I tell you “come with me to the museum, there is this fantastic exhibition on medieval art at the Met”, I can already hear a thousand excuses. And I am with you: despite having come to appreciate how rich this art can be during my Art History studies, I would not put Medieval or Renaissance art on my walls. But what about if Byzantine art comes with this little Dolce & Gabana number? With Heavenly Bodies, there are many mutually reinforcing forces at play, and they all compel the viewers to look and learn from this cleverly orchestrated dialogue between past, present and future. Perhaps finding mannequins wearing haute couture gowns […]
Nestled in New Canaan, Connecticut, Grace Farms is a bucolic place where art meets architecture in a natural setting of green meadows.
If you think you can walk from the Eiffel Tower to the Venice canals without crossing the street, you’ve either lost your mind or you’re in Las Vegas. Maybe both experiences are one and the same thing, actually. With Las Vegas being mostly all about walking endlessly through hotels and losing oneself (and more!) in the sprawling casinos, what’s real and what’s fake soon amounts to the exact same thing. It can be hard for your brain to know which is which. Disoriented by permanently dimmed lights, a pervasive smell of cigarettes and constant chimes from slot machines, it is quite hard even knowing what time of day it is. Las Vegas being a place where very little brain power is required, what little you bring, you’re encouraged to loose. Nevertheless, ask most people and they will tell you they associate Las Vegas with epic memories, usually rooted in excesses of all kind such as gambling, drinking, spending, but memories all the same. The infamous “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” sums it all.
I often hear my associations of ideas are off-beat or décalé (or off-the-wall, depending on how polite you are :-). So let me throw you at the cross between yoga, running and art and see what you think! To me, breathing is at this intersection on my grid – often underestimated, so underrated yet ESSENTIAL! I practice yoga 3 times a week, no matter what. I am also half way through my marathon training program. So let’s just say I have learnt to pay attention to breathing because my life (an your life) depends on it 🙂 There is a meditative quality to breathing that helps me get through the discomfort of a crescent lunge on my weaker side or the pain that usually comes without a fail after running 17 miles. I made breathing a life tool and a habit but like most things, I refused to make it bland. My wonderful yoga teacher Karoll B. uses the visualisation of a ball of color that I can match with my mood or my needs of the day. It works wonders and allows me to power through most days! So much so that I found myself thinking of my yoga practice, breathing and […]
Palm Springs always feels like travelling back in time to a Mid-Century Modern life with the desert as backdrop. Except that this week it was surprisingly green everywhere, (ok, greener). Yes, after almost 6 years in California under severe draught conditions, I have been reacquainted with rain! And a lot of it! Don’t hate me just yet, let me earn your forgiveness with a post full of pictures this week as I give you Desert X, an exhibition of art installations throughout the Coachella Valley.
Superficiality, distortion and lack of authenticity are plaguing our world, our news and sometimes our relationships with people. Maybe technology makes everything available but it also buries us under an avalanche of impersonal content with little substance. So, with this in mind, I give you the very personal art of Do Ho Suh and his many variations on the theme of displacement. Have you ever moved to a different country? Have you ever had to leave your comfort zone to start from scratch at school, at work, at the grocery store? I am French, married to a Brit and after living in quite a few countries, we are currently in California. It is not the most extreme expatriation by any means, but displacement knows no geographic measure. For me, Do Ho Suh sums up the many shapes of displacement in this little house landed askance on the roof of a building. His artworks always resonate up close and personal and they’ve helped me long after the exhibitions have closed. I saw his Apartment A (2011–2012), Corridor and Staircase (2011–2012), and Unit 2, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA (2014) during an exhibition at the MCASD last year so I will use my pictures to describe what I feel may […]