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May 11 thru July 15, 2006
curated by Julia Draganovic and Manon Slome
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 11 6-8pm
CHAMPION MÉTADIER: TIMETRACKERS
The Chelsea Art Museum, Home of the Miotte Foundation, is pleased
to announce the opening of Timetrackers, a new body of work from
celebrated French artist, Champion Métadier. This is the
first time that this series of sixteen large-scale paintings and
drawings will be shown in America. The exhibition which will run
from May 11 to July 15, is curated by Julia Draganovic, Director
of the Chelsea Art Museum.
The title of the exhibition, Timetrackers, posits a certain "science
fiction" narrative to this series of work. But instead of launching
the viewer into any number of hyper-kinetic visions of the future,
these paintings rather envelop us, drawing the viewer backwards,
inwards, almost to the very instant when "the earth was without
form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."
In this first verse of the genesis of Champion Métadier's
universe, elemental forms of vivid, candy-colored, acid shapes emerge
from and move languidly over the face of what the artist calls,
"The Void of Light," an ultra white background that gives
the paintings an almost hallucinogenic.
The painting's soft lines and seeming lack of edges purposely
confound analysis. There is no measurement here, no compass. The
tension in the paintings lies in the mutability of Champion Métadier's
visual solutions, which at once seem to belong to one visual universe
and, at the same time, posit contrary significations. There is no
answer, no absolute to be found, never one final solution possible
given such multiple choices of interpretation.
These are paintings of a world of sexual games, paradox and enigma,
fable and riddle, in short, our world. The works depict something
beyond, as yet, the binary oppositions of the relentlessly calculating
and codifying human imagination and intelligence. In looking at
this body of work, we are reminded that for all our vaunted reason,
theories and knowledge, we are still but puzzled and amazed children,
in over our heads. Indeed, it is not too much to say, that the viewer
is "led back to the situation of a child which for the first
time faces an object and without any analytical tool imposed, applies
no functional or emotional hieratical rule to what it sees and renews
its novel experience each time its eyes go back to the object."
(Ann Hindry , 2002)
Champion Métadier has been the subject of solo exhibitions
in Paris, Stockholm, Venice, Geneva, Cologne, Vienna, Tokyo, Lisbon,
Buenes Aires, Montreal and New York. Her most recent solo shows
took place at the Musée de Beaux Arts de Nancy. Her next
exhibition will be on view at the MAMAC, the Museum of Modern Art
and Contemporary Art in Nice in 2007. Chelsea Art Museum, Home of
the Miotte Foundation, is pleased to announce an new exhibition,
Nature, featuring the work of the Italian sculptor and performance
arist, Sissi. The exhibition will be on view from May 25 to July
15 2006. The exhibition is curated by Julia Draganovic and Manon
Slome.
For more information please contact:
Chris Longfellow
Press Officer
The Chelsea Art Museum
chris@chelseaartmuseum.org
212-255-0719 x 108
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