Marc Camille Chaimowicz, installation view, Secession 2009
A floorscape of carpets with floral and abstract ornamental patterns in soft pastel shades is spread out in the Secession’s light-flooded white cube. The large-format asymmetric carpets lie on bases of different heights whose vertical and horizontal surfaces are at crooked angles, calling into question the functionality of the tufted carpets at the same time as elevating them to the status of autonomous artworks. A multitude of parasols in variously patterned fabrics are arranged on and beside the carpets. Wall designs which filigree patterns and colour palette indicate the artist’s style decorate the side walls. A theater curtain and Curtain (For MvdR) from the last Berlin Biennale (dedicated to Mies van der Rohe, 2008) give the show a vertical dimension. A few furniture pieces and a painting in ten parts are scattered within the space ...
Marc Camille Chaimowicz, installation view, Secession 2009
This environment created especially for the Secession out of primarily new works contains the quintessence of a multi-faceted artistic oeuvre. Over the past four decades, from performances and installations in the 1970s through designs for furniture, ceramics, and patterns for mass-produced consumer items, Marc Camille Chaimowicz has developed an unmistakable formal idiom and signature style. His belief in beauty and lightness, elegance and cultivation is expressed in his preference for graceful curves, delicate forms, and a characteristic palette of pastel shades. This nuanced approach reflects the ambiguity of the artwork, which is always situated somehow “in-between”.
Marc Camille Chaimowicz, installation view, Secession 2009
In what he terms “choreographies”, Chaimowicz takes pleasure in breaking down the hierarchy of applied and fine art. His pattern designs appear rooted in the painterly vocabulary of modernism, especially that of French painting, to whose legacy he feels attached. They are used as patterns for wallpaper, carpets, and textiles. As at the Secession, however, they may also cover entire walls or feature as components in the artist’s publications. His furniture pieces tread the often indistinct line between consumer item and art object. In this exhibition, this is made especially clear by the two dressing tables Deux coiffeuses (peut-être pour adoles-cents), l’une habillée, l’une pas (2008), but also in Dual, a kind of reversible chair combining a recliner and, when turned through 90 degrees, an armchair.
Marc Camille Chaimowicz, installation view, Secession 2009
In his exhibition at the Secession, Chaimowicz refers specifically to a long stay in Vienna in 1982 as part of the Humanic-Artist-in-Residence-Programme. At this time, his engagement with the craft products of the Wiener Werkstätte and with Viennese architecture provided him with important stimuli. With its formal reduction to a two-dimensional plane, Vienna Tryptich, Leaning ... and Surrounded by Chorus Girls and Sentinels ... (1982), a work from this period included in the show, is paradigmatic for his development towards works and spatial compositions characterized by a condensed formal aesthetic.
Marc Camille Chaimowicz, installation view, Secession 2009
In the 1970s, Chaimowicz made environments whose formal idiom drew on art history and the popcultural repertoire of glam rock: disco balls, spot-lights, fairy lights, and pop music on the one hand, on the other symbolically loaded elements from art history such as mirrors and flowers, used in works including Celebration? Realife and Enough Tiranny (both 1972). Together with his performances, these works stood in contrast to the purism of Conceptual and Minimal Art, making the artist one of the most important figures in the British high-subculture of the 1970s.
His artistic development is closely linked to the political and societal changes of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The student revolt of 1968, which Chaimowicz experienced directly in Paris, was a major influence. His main sources of inspiration were not the political left in Britain, which he initially observed with interest but soon rejected as authoritarian and dogmatic, but feminism and the gay liberation movement. His artistic focus in the early 1970s on the private/public divide and the domestic domain, with its traditionally female connotation, can be read as a radical emancipatory step.
To underline the fact that even in the exhibition context, artists do not find themselves in a sociopolitical vacuum sealed off from the outside world, Chaimowicz occasionally invites guest artists. For his show at the Secession, he has invited the Viennese architect Hermann Czech, whom he holds in high esteem, and the young British artist Simon Thompson.
Marc Camille Chaimowicz, born in postwar Paris, lives and works in London and Burgundy.
Exhibition talk
Saturday, January 23, 2010, 4 p.m.
Marc Camille Chaimowicz in conversation with Anette Freudenberger.
An Event by the Friends of the Secession
Catalogue
 |
MARC CAMILLE CHAIMOWICZ, A Folio for Secession Artist’s portfolio with five pattern sheets, a letter from Marc Camille Chaimowicz in facsimile, and an essay by Silvia Eiblmayr (German/English and French /English). Produced by the Secession, published in cooperation with Musée La Piscine, Roubaix. ___________________ available in the shop |
 |
 |
POCKETBOOKS Marc Camille Chaimowicz limited edition - 80 pieces, with gold foil stamping small - with elastic band, medium-sized, large, spiral binding ___________________ available in the shop |
Solo shows (selection)
2009 Enough Tiranny Recalled, 1972-2009, Artists Space, New York; We Chose Our Words With Care, (…), Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles; Dressed & Undressed, Triple V, Dijon; 2008 Some Ways by which to Live…, Frac Aquitaine, Bordeaux; …In The Cherished Compagny of Others…, De Appel, Amsterdam (touring); Kunstmuseum Aan Zee, Ostende; …opera designs per il teatro di S.Carlo…, Fonti Gallery, Naples; 2007 Featuring Enough Tyranny Recalled, Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin; Summer’s Song…, Centre d’Art Contemporain La Sinagogue de Delme; 2006 Zürich Suite, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; 2005 Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Kunstverein für Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Concertina, Giti Nourbakhsch Galerie, Berlin; 2004 Jean Cocteau, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham; 2003 Jean Cocteau, Norwich Gallery, Norwich; Une Exposition pour Cluny, Ecuries de Saint-Hugues, Cluny; Cabinet Apartment, Cabinet, London.
Group shows (selection)
2009 Entre deux actes – Loge de comedienne, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden; Two Horizons, Works from the collections of Charles Asprey & Alexander Schroder, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; 2008 GSK Contemporary, Royal Academy of Arts, London; BB5, 5th Berlin Biennal, Berlin; 2007 The Secret Public, the last days of the British Underground 1978-1988, ICA, London; RAW, Among Ruins, Marres Centre for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht; 2006 The Secret Public, the last days of the British Underground 1978-1988, Kunstverein, München; The subversive charm of the bourgeoisie, Vanabben Museum, Eindhoven; Tate Triennial 2006 New British Art, Tate Britain, London; 2005 Le Voyage Intèrieur Paris-London, Espace EDF Electra, Paris; 2004 It’s All An Illusion: A Sculpture Project, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; 2003 On General Release, Institute of Visual Culture, Cambridge; 2002 The Rule of Hospitality, Galerie Neu, Berlin (curated by Cabinet); International Portrait Gallery, Flourish Nights, Glasgow; St. Petrischnee, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; 2001 Hôtel Sub Rosa, Cabinet, London; 2000 Live In Your Head, The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Celebration? Realife Revisited, 1972/2000, I Love Dijon, Le Consortium, Dijon.
Installation shots: Wolfgang Thaler
Thanks
The Secession thanks Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Hermann Czech, Simon Thompson, and all those who loaned works for their kind support:
Bloomberg SPACE, London; Cabinet, London; Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin; Gabriele Anton Sarl and Anastasia Denoux, Metz.
The Secession is supported by:
Erste Bank – Partner of the Secession
Wien Kultur
Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur
Friends of the Secession
Cooperation-, Media partners, Non-cash benefit:
Der Standard
Ö1 Club
Silver Server
hs art service austria GmbH
Trumer Privatbrauerei
VIENNA ART WEEK 2009
| MICHAEL ASHKIN MONA VĂTĂMANU & FLORIN TUDOR | EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2009 |
For further information and photographic material please contact:
Pia Leydolt
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at