Trouble Rainbow III

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Installation view Trouble Rainbow III

 

Trouble Rainbow III
Claudia Comte, Athene Galiciadis & Mélodie Mousset
1st September – 13th October 2012
Opening Friday 31st August 2012, 5 – 9 pm

On the evening of 31st August BolteLang gallery will reveal Trouble Rainbow III, the third instalment of a collaborative exhibition by Claudia Comte, Mélodie Mousset and Athene Galiciadis. With this exhibition the gallerists pursue their intent to offer a site for experimentation, to be alert to and to foster new developments in contemporary art.

The three artists met studying at ECAL in Lausanne; Comte (b. 1983, Switzerland), Mousset (b. 1981, Abu Dhabi, UAE) and Galiciadis (b. 1978, Switzerland) each have successful solo visual art careers but value the possibilities offered by “three heads and six hands”. Their combined energies have assumed an alter ego, a utopian hermit creating a space in which to withdraw from society. Trouble Rainbow began at Galleria Marie-Laure Fleisch, Rome in 2011, before a second instalment at the artist-run space Favourite Goods in Los Angeles. Each manifestation of this exhibition has expanded new facets of this concept of the intimate: a sculptural environment in Rome was extended and occupied by a performance and sleepover in LA; at BolteLang their intent is to make a significant shift in order to further activate the space.

At the time of writing, Comte, Mousset and Galiciadis find themselves at the beginning of a residency of sorts in the gallery. During this time they will create an installation using the sculptural and graphic elements from the two previous exhibitions; they plan to physically move these from occupation of the space to positions on the walls of the gallery, to “erase the gravity of the show”, though the objects still bear the traces of their previous use. This radical move has paradoxical intent – either to make utilitarian objects into images to be viewed like paintings, or to make every element a utilitarian object that hangs on the wall in its assigned position awaiting usage. The arrangement will be over a freehand grid pattern that has been the constant backdrop to Trouble Rainbow, operating as a device that binds diverse elements; it is a net to trap, a matrix from which ideas emerge and the immobile measure against which phenomena are recorded. This latter function reveals the artists’ interest in experimental systems from scientific fields, which have proved to be productive methods for their own work.

For all three a meditative state between waking and sleeping is a creative wellspring, which led to the sculptural bed as a central object in Trouble Rainbow I. In LA this became a dormitory full of beds for an experiment in ‘social dreaming’. Though the artists are not adherents of this discipline founded by Dr. Gordon Lawrence, they are happy to reclaim the oneiric realm, and are likely to continue this directed undirectedness and sharing of experiences of it during their time at BolteLang. However the key performative action that the artists will carry out, and invite others to join, will be life improvement music arranged and played by The Fai Baba Band prior to the opening. Taking advantage of the art gallery as a privileged site in which to enact an exceptional shared situation, concert-goers will be asked to perform choreographed and improvised rituals with the objects in the space (beds, sculptures and masks). A film of this event will be shown in the gallery office space and will be available as an edition.

Aoife Rosenmeyer

Claudia Comte: Gstaad 13, curated by Neville Wakefield, Gstaad, 2013; Unter 30 VIII – Junge Schweizer Kunst, Kunsthaus Glarus, 2012; Grant, UBS Kulturstiftung, 2012; Swiss Art Awards, Basel, 2012; winner Kiefer-Halblitzel prize, 2012; winner Prix Mobilière 2012; La Jeunesse est un art, Aargauer Kunsthaus, 2012; To Zanzibar from Acapulco, with Guillaume Pilet, SALTS, Basel, 2012; From Acapulco to Zanzibar, with Guillaume Pilet, La Rada, Locarno, 2012; Tell The Children/ Abstraction pour Enfant, La Salle de Bains, Lyon, 2012: Scantione-Tensione, solo, The Swiss Cube 3, Istituto Svizzero di Roma, 2011; Territoires, 11e edition de Bex & Arts, triennale de sculpture Suisse, Bex, 2011; Naturalisés, with Tatiana Rihs, Musée Arlaud, Lausanne, 2009

Athene Galiciadis: Grant, UBS Kulturstiftung, 2012; La Jeunesse est un art, Aargauer Kunsthaus, 2012; Eight meter in my belly, solo, Galerie/Artspace Milieu, Bern, 2012; Swiss Art Awards, Basel, 2011; winner Prix Mobilière 2011; winner Eidgenössischer Kunstpreis, 2011; La Crotte du Diable, solo, Kunsthaus Langenthal, 2010; Formale Wiederholungen & das Ende der Welt, with Ana Roldan, Camping, Mexico City, 2010; Gipfeltreffen, KIT Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2009; NADA Art Fair, Miami and LISTE, Basel with  Claudia Groeflin Galerie, Zurich, 2010 and 2009

Mélodie Mousset: solo show, Suzanne Geiss Company, New York, 2013; solo show, Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles, 2012; solo show, Joyce Gallery, Beijing, 2012; The Big Toe, Wall Space, New York, 2012; Re-Cycles of Paradise, LACE, Los Angeles, 2011; Xenophylia (Love of the Unknown), PDC MOCA, Los Angeles, 2011; Paul Clay, Salon 94, New York, 2011; Greater LA, curated by Benjamin Godsill, Joel Mesler and Eleonor Cayre, New York, 2011; Impulsive Control, solo, Claudia Groeflin Galerie, Zurich, 2010; Party-animal, solo, Galerie Marion Meyer, Paris, 2009

Exhibition documentation