Paris Update Art News
POIGNANT LIVES
“Les Histoires d’Amour Finissent Mal…en Général” (2011), by Giulia Andreani.
Even though the exhibition “Silent Faces” (through March 8) is being held in the minuscule Galerie 22,48 m2, (30 rue des Envierges, 75020 Paris; tel.: 09 81 72 26 37), it manages to include the work of five artists: Giulia Andreani, Morgane Denzler, Sandra Lorenzi, Leopoldo Mazzoleni and Erwan Venn. This moving show uses jigsaw puzzles, photographs, paintings, drawings and postcards to explore the human desire to construct narratives of our lives. When we act on this desire, we decide a number of things: what language to use, what discrete events comprise the narrative, which are the “important” ones and whether there are any recurrent themes (e.g., images, places, people or works of art) that form motifs like those in a piece of music. Impressively, the works in “Silent Faces” manage to keep a critical distance from the narratives constructed in, for example, old postcards (simply by exhibiting them, but also by partially censuring them). The photographs by Erwan Venn, which have been edited so that the subjects’ bodies have been erased – leaving only their floating clothes – are particularly, and oddly, poignant. Harry Long
Favorite