PIERE LEGUILLON, 'NON-HAPPENING AFTER AD REINHARDT' AT RAVEN ROW, LONDON

Pierre Leguillon presenting Ad Reinhardt's slides

Pierre Leguillon, Non-Happening after Ad Reinhardt, slide show, carrousel 1

Pierre Leguillon in conversation with Seth Sieglaub

one of the carrousels with Ad Reinhardt's slides

cabinets of curiosities with different kinds of Ad Reinhardt's work, black silkscreens, cartoons, etc...

Pierre Leguillon

Non-Happening after Ad Reindhart

Raven Row invites you to a special presentation by French artist Pierre Leguillon, with the participation of Seth Siegelaub. For his Non-happening after Ad Reinhardt, Leguillon will show 350 slides that were used in performance lectures by New York abstract painter Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967). Leguillon will then discuss Reinhardt with Conceptual Art pioneer Seth Siegelaub, who as an art dealer in New York in the 1960s knew Reinhardt and shared with him an interest in Islamic art.

Ad Reinhardt is best known for his black monochromes, or ‘ultimate paintings’, to which he devoted himself during the 1960s. Also well known are the satirical comic strips and illustrations he made for Art News magazine and the leftwing newspaper PM. However, little is documented about the artist’s archive of 10,000 photographic slides, now held by the Ad Reinhardt Foundation in New York.

From eyewitness accounts it has been established that Reinhardt’s slide shows consisted of a rapid succession of details of art, decorative art and architecture, photographed during his many travels abroad. Constructing a formal analysis of artistic creation over centuries, they seemed to follow George Kubler’s hypothesis in The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things that there is no progress in art. By framing his shots so as to reveal hidden or overlooked aspects of cultural artefacts, Reinhardt also offered a global ‘reading’ of the history of art, anticipating today’s image search engines.

For the London chapter of this event, Leguillon has invited Seth Siegelaub, who in the mid-1960s let Reinhardt consult his collection of books on oriental rugs shortly before they joined the library of Asia House in New York. Their discussion will highlight the fact that Reinhardt’s slides, beyond their author’s acknowledged role as a leading proponent of Abstract Expressionism and a precursor of Minimal Art, can be seen as a missing link in a history that leads from Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1924–1929) to similar archival endeavours by Charles Eames, Sol LeWitt and Gerhard Richter.

Pierre Leguillon (b. 1969, France) lives and works in Paris. Leguillon has been working with slide shows since 1993, most recently in presentations at Artists’ Space in New York, Mudam in Luxembourg and the Louvre in Paris. His solo exhibition at Mamco, Geneva, in 2010 took the form of a large-scale installation exploring the notion of a personal archaeology of perception. Leguillon’s exhibition Diane Arbus : Rétrospective imprimée (1960-1971), which was first shown in 2008 at the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, toured to Moderna Museet in Malmö, De Hallen in Haarlem and CCA in Vilnius.

Seth Siegelaub (b. 1941, USA) lives and works in Amsterdam. A prominent art dealer, independent exhibitions organiser, publisher, political researcher and textile bibliographer, he is best known for his pivotal role in the emergence of Conceptual Art in the 1960s through his projects with artists such as Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner. As part of the manifold activities he undertook after leaving the art world in 1972, Siegelaub has been collecting woven and printed textiles, embroideries and costume from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas as well as bark cloth and headdresses from Oceania and Africa. A selection of works from his textile collection will be shown at Raven Row from 1 March to 6 May 2012 in an exhibition curated by Sara Martinetti, Alice Motard and Alex Sainsbury.

The next instalment of Pierre Leguillon’s ongoing series of Non-happenings after Ad Reinhardt will take place on 17 December 2011 at Murray Guy in New York and will feature guest speaker Ute Meta Bauer.

With the kind support of the Ad Reinhardt Foundation, New York.
Special thanks to Rita Reinhardt, Anna Reinhardt and Susan Sabiston.

Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS
T +44 (0)20 7377 4300
info@ravenrow.org
www.ravenrow.org

'RETRACING EXHIBITIONS' CURATED BY KARI CONTE AND FLORENCE OSTENDE AT RCA, LONDON

Reconstruction of the 1953 exhibition 'Parallel of Life and Art' by members of the Independent Group at the ICA and Pierre Leguillon's 'Placement'


Kim Levin 'Downtown Announcements, 1975-1991' and 'Notes 2 1995-2004', invitation cards and annotated press releases. Mark Sladen, director of exhibitions at ICA standing to the left


Hans Haacke, 'Photographic Notes: Documenta 2' 1959


Joelle Tuerlinckx, 'Drawing Inventory-Drawing Center New York 2006' chosen extracts for Retracing Exhibitions, 2009

Retracing Exhibitions, 

curated by Kari Conte and Florence Ostende

Retracing Exhibitions addresses the difficulty of experiencing by-gone exhibitions in the present. As the primary, yet, ephemeral medium through which art is made public exhibitions form our understanding of art and its institutions. Despite the plethora of shows that have been produced, there is insufficient exhibition literature and pictorial archives to document them. Retracing Exhibitions assesses how we think about both temporary and permanent exhibitions in retrospect, in order to preserve what they realise for the future.

This exhibition juxtaposes a reconstructed fragment of the 1953 Institute of Contemporary Arts London exhibition Parallel of Life and Art, an exhibition by The Independent Group including Nigel Henderson, Ronald Jenkins, Eduardo Paolozzi and Alison and Peter Smithson, which featured blown-up photographic images arranged in a non-hierarchal order from the fields of anthropology, biology, technology and art. Through contemporary artworks and a past exhibition, this project looks at the capacity of the viewer to recollect exhibitions from historic, experiential, and intellectual positions.

Artists and contributors: Benoit Broisat, Hans Haacke, Pierre Leguillon, Kim Levin, Sarah Pierce, Kirsten Pieroth, Joelle Tuerlinckx, the interview archives of Hans Ulrich Obrist and a reconstruction of the 1953 Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) exhibition Parallel of Life and Art

http://www.cca.rca.ac.uk/friendsofthedividedmind/retracing

PIERRE LEGUILLON'S 'PLACEMENT' LECTERN AT REPLACING EXHIBITIONS, A REPLICA OF BARRAGAN'S LECTERN

Pierre Leguillon's lectern at 'Retracing Exhibitions'


Barragan's lectern at his house!


measurement drawings of Barragan's lectern by PLB done in 1995 used to build Leguillon's lectern!



Pierre Leguillon's 'Placement'

Leguillon has photographed many exhibitions since 1993 which he integrates amongst other images into slideshows he regularly screens in public, their content being augmented and renewed for each session. Placement (2009) is a composition of installation images, engravings, film stills, postcards and magazine pages arranged on a replica of architect Luis Barragan's wooden lectern from his house in Mexico City.

Pierre Leguillon was born in 1969. He has developed projects as a curator and critic since the beginning of the 1990s, by creating a single page review, "Sommaire" (35 issues between 1991 and 1996), then by collaborating on "Journal des Arts", and "Art press" (Special issue "Oublier l'exposition" in 2000), then on "Purple" (column "Calme plat" about printed objects from 2002 to 2004). His slideshows have been shown at Centre d'Art et du Paysage de Vassiviere in Limousin, Maison Rouge and Menagerie de Verre in Paris; LIFE in Saint-Nazaire; Secession in Vienna and Temple Gallery in Philadelphia among others. In October 2008, he opened in Bordeaux, at the Capc, a franchise of "La promesse de l'écran" ("The promise of the screen"), a screening space initiated in Paris in 2007. He will have a solo exhibition at the gallery Song Song in Vienna from December 2008 to January 2009. He recently curated the exhibition Diane Arbus: A Printed Retrospective, 1960-1971 in Paris at Kadist Art Foundation (2009).

PARIS, A VISIT TO KADIST FOUNDATION: PIERRE LEGUILLON FEATURES 'DIANE ARBUS: A PRINTED RETROSPECTIVE, 1960–1971'

Matthieu Laurette's work inserted in between Diane Arbus' work


Pierre Leguillon features
Diane Arbus : A Printed Retrospective, 1960–1971

December 6, 2008 — February 8, 2009

At Kadist Art Foundation Pierre Leguillon presents the first retrospective of the works of Diane Arbus (1923–1971) organized in France since 1980, bringing together all the images commissioned to the New York photographer by the Anglo-American press in the 1960s. The exhibition will present the original pages of the magazines, including ‘Harper’s Bazaar’, ‘Esquire’, ‘Nova’ and ‘The Sunday Times Magazine’. Always conceived specifically by Diane Arbus for the press medium, these photographs are showcased in their original format for the first time.

This private collection consists of more than 150 photographs, demonstrating Diane Arbus’ discreet point of view through a great variety of subjects: reportage, anonymous or celebrity portraits (Norman Mailer, Jorge Luis Borges, Lilian et Dorothy Gish, Mia Farrow, Marcello Mastroianni, Madame Martin Luther King...), children’s fashion, and several « photographic essays », with captions or comments by the photographer herself.

By presenting the original magazines, the exhibition emphasizes the formal choices related to layout, and places the photographs back in the social or political context of that time.

Pierre Leguillon introduces a few texts or images by other photographers in the exhibition (including Walker Evans, Annie Leibovitz, Victor Burgin, Wolfgang Tillmans, la Documentation Céline Duval or Matthieu Laurette), as direct or indirect references to the images presented. The display offers unprecedented connections underlining the actuality of this major 20th century body of work.

www.kadist.org