Press Release
PARIS/LA: "The path from Paris to LA leads through the history of 20th century art with generous layovers in erotic cubism, stinging surrealism, irreverent realism, and cut-to-the-bone conceptualism. "
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Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday 11 AM – 5PM, Saturday 11AM - 3 PM
LOS ANGELES – PARIS/LA is the inaugural exhibition of Cache Contemporary, art gallery and conceptual space. The exhibition, organized and curated by Whitey Flagg, co-founder of I V Y Paris, Popomatic and Welcome to the Plastic Factory, brings together a dozen artists working in Paris and the most seminal musicians and DJs in Los Angeles for what will be one of the cultural events of the summer.
“What I discovered in Paris,” says Flagg “is a highly-charged eroticism that, combined with a surreal irony, makes for a sometimes shocking always penetrating point of view. PARIS/LA brings that hot and cool sensibility to this new Los Angeles gallery space. Think: Ruscha bombed on Margaux. Or Matisse tossed in a shark tank.”
The path from Paris to LA leads through the history of 20th century art with generous layovers in erotic cubism, stinging surrealism, irreverent realism, and cut-to-the-bone conceptualism. Politics, sex, drugs, light, feminism, homosexuality and the evaporation of the contemporary self are all featured in this playful gang bang of art and music that celebrates Paris and Los Angeles in an explosive haze of savoir faire.
The overriding theme of Paris/LA is steamy sensuality writhing about in plush irony.
Paris-based American, Matthew Rose’s A Perfect Friend collages reinvent 1930s-1940s surrealism using Viagra, glue and religion. http://homepage.mac.com/mistahcoughdrop/ Novelist, art and fashion writer, artist book maker, Rose will also show needlepoint text works (“Communism,” 2003) and a series of irreverent collages, mail art pieces, conceptual objects and word drawings.
American transplant Chase creates quasi-cubist-fauvist looking oil on canvas nudes. His “Deux ou Trois Femmes” is an eye-popping orgiastic study. Chase exhibits regularly in San Francisco at the Sutter Gallery and is an executive producer with Mr. Mudd.
Jeremy Stigter’s black and white “Horse” turns My Friend Flicker on its arse. Stigter, a photographer living in Paris for nearly 20 years, will also exhibit several films: Number 3, Hoover, At the Seaside, Slap, and Untitled. Stigter, a Dutch ex-pat, works as a fashion and fine arts photographer and super-8 filmmaker.
Whitey Flagg lifts texts from Parisian graffiti-splattered bathrooms and turns them into large-scale conceptual koans. Among his newest works are: “There is not enough of nothing in it” (John Cage) and “Think of this as a window.” Flagg, an LA-institution, is making PARIS/LA his homecoming party. He volleys back and forth from LA and Paris.
Jennifer Witcher’s semi-nude photo portraits like “Agastya clever shirt secret panties weave,” are woven into the Paris fashions of Agastya (Ex-pats Annie Sullivan and Masako Shiro), and covered with beeswax, giving them a silky skin-like surface. Witcher, a freelance photographer, lives and works in Paris.
Scottish artist Suzanne Hollands brings the world to the walls of LA with her text projections that lay bare the intersection of tourism and Western Civilization. Co-founder of the Paris Art Collective, IVY PARIS, Hollands splits her time as artist and Paris real estate guru advising foreign clients on property investment (Bonapart Consulting).
Anthony Antonellis isolates with precision Paris guide marks found around the capital’s on streets and tunnels. Part of a larger work about the semiotics of travel “that make societies function efficiently like human wires,” Antonellis sees himself as an intimate tour guide to 21st century Paris. Anthony also designs web sites for French and US clients.
Gloria Zein’s film, “Every Time,” (2004, 60 mins.), was born of her series Vorspiele, about the reinvention of the self in everyday advertising. Her sexy self-portraits as “someone else” have toured Europe to great acclaim.