In 2012, I was visiting Chelsea and walked into an exhibition at Pace gallery called “The Unplayed Notes” where I was introduced to the work of Loris Gréaud. The exhibition was bold, abstracted and heavy in video, light, architectural, sculptural, sound and even smell installation — something for all the senses. I can remember this exhibition so clearly that I can still smell the musty aged urine. 10 years later, my memory of this exhibition has informed my decisions made with No Gallery programing to early on and today.
No Gallery is happy to be a part of Loris Gréaud’s three stage sculptural work “The Boredom of the Atom” in collaboration with Base Progetti Per L’arte (Italy). The exhibitions first stage opens (today) September 17th, 2022 from 5 – 8 pm at Base (Via San Niccolò 18r 50125 Firenze / Italia) – Base Website . Stage two will be in Paris, undocumented and not available for public view. Stage three will be on display at No Gallery (105 Henry Street NYC NY 10002) on December 21st, 2022.
The work will begin its existence at Base (located at their space in Florence, Italy) composed of 2,000 copper leaves arranged on the floor just as the real ones normally appear on the streets and in parks during the fall season is displayed. The patina of the individual elements is not fixed and as a result the color will change over time, oxidizing, to become a greener and greener just like outdoor copper public sculpture. “It is a project about the reduction and translation of elements,” Gréaud is keen to point out, “It is a project about vanity and still life”. The artist continues his reflection by adding: “However, it is also a project that has to do with “mutation”. “The mutation of form and the mutation of values, but also of perception and status.”
The exhibition at BASE is the first stage of a project that thrives on three autonomous and interconnected moments that will see after the exhibition in Florence the 2000 copper leaves brought back to the artist’s studio in Paris to be melted down and restored to their original stage as ingots. The third phase will then consist of exhibiting those very ingots in New York City, at No Gallery exhibited inside a safe, open and visible during the opening hours of the exhibition duration. The work will be permanent to No Gallery as the mutation of BASE show in Florence will haunt No Gallery in New York City.
The final stage will exist as long as No Gallery exists.
Loris Gréaud is thinking about the first stop in Florence and the dialogue with the context recalls that: “back in 2019, late Germano Celant had an input while working on our project* that has been determinant on so many levels and has sparkled ideas and images until than; like an haiku: ‘let’s unplug the show Loris, let’s unplug the space’. Inside BASE I would like to “unplug the power and let the exhibition be visited only by the light that comes from outside, from the city. Let the light from the city enter the space to see how it reacts and what it accomplishes, just as we will have to understand how the patina of copper changes over time, no buzz, no electricity, no connection, an open space and art.” The tile of the exhibition – as Gréaud himself suggests — The Boredom of the Atom is a resonance that brings together the conceptual and lyric dimension. It is an insight that speaks about alchemy, about the “Magnum Opus” the slight differences between lead and gold and its quest, but also about the loneliness of the atom, with the ubiquity of spaces : interaction with different contexts, nature, time, places and cities.
Loris Gréaud (Eaubonne, France, 1979; lives and works in Paris), since the early 2000s, has developed a singular trajectory in the international art scene whereby he constructs unique environments to house disruptive elements, often with an ambiguous narrative that blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality. Rumors, poetry, viruses, architecture and demolition, academicism and self-negation are therefore regularly summoned in his work as it strives to oppose the separation between physical and mental spaces.
Loris Gréaud’s projects have given rise to important solo exhibitions. He was the first artist to use all the space of the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), with his project CELLAR DOOR (2008-2011). In 2013, the Louvre Museum and the Centre Georges Pompidou invited him to design a double exhibition that will bring the project to life [I]. In 2015, he took over all the spaces of the Dallas Contemporary (United States) with his project: The Unplayed Notes Museum. In 2016 he produced the project Sculpt specially for LACMA (Los Angeles). In 2017, he attracted the attention of the 57th Venice Biennale with his project The Unplayed Notes Factory in Murano (Italy). In 2019, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art hosted the 2nd phase of the LACMA project entitled: Sculpt: Grumpy Bear, the Great Spinoff. In 2019, the exhibition The Original, The Translation highlighted his entire editorial activity at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky / Centre Georges Pompidou.
In February 2020, the artist has inaugurated his permanent project The Underground Sculpture Park at the Casa Wabi Foundation, in continuation of the architecture designed by Tadao Ando. In 2020, the exhibition BROCCOLI, conceived as a work in its own right and presented at the Collection Lambert in Avignon, honored his professional relationship and complicity with the former dealer Yvon Lambert. The works The Multiplication Table of Obsession and Irresolution, after their entry into the collections of the Centre National D’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou (France), are currently presented in a dedicated room.