Gerard and Kelly waltz the bodies on the Carré d’art in Nîmes

Modern dances are exhibited at the Carré d’art exhibition in Nîmes

the Nimes Art Square in the past, it has dedicated exhibitions to contemporary dance and artists who express themselves through performance. That Gerard & KellyOpening in October is part of this exploration of gestures and bodies that reflect specific historical and socio-political contexts. The duo’s multifaceted work, including performance, video, painting and even sculpture, questions – especially through the project Modern Living – the discourses created by modern architecture in relation to bodies. It is with this question in mind that the duo is investing in the Nîmes museum.

This place combines the two-thousand-year-old Maison Carrée and the Carré d’art, the architect’s glass structure, around the same square. Norman Foster Completed in 1993 and recently hosting an exhibition by artist Glenn Ligo, it is a contrast where artists draw material to feed their practice based on the study of architecture.a memory-making machine” or to create stories. In site-specific performances and videos, these stories are activated by contemporary bodies set in motion in luxurious modern buildings such as the Schindler House, the Glass House in West Hollywood. Philip Johnson In New Canaan, Connecticut, the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe or the Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier. The narratives carried by these constructions then emerge as remnants of the past colliding with the present: “In our vision, architecture hides past stories and relationships, Brennan Gerard explains. These fragments of history are now decontextualized and can be tied into contemporary stories or questions to address our contemporary reality.“

The work of Gerard & Kelly, an encounter between bodies and architecture

In the postmodern perspective adopted by Ryan Kelly and Brennan Gerard, the museum itself is a relic of its own project of being, according to the assumption made by theorist Douglas Crimp in his text. In the ruins of the museum, serving as inspiration for the duo to think about their intervention art square. Call, in the press release of the demonstration, face to face art square and Maison Carrée, ryan kelly emphasizes thatan unsettling sight, as the architecture of the museum is both a palimpsest and a ruin“. He adds: “I get the impression that when we think about the exhibition, we come back to this picture, which reminds me of what Craig Owens and Douglas Crimp wrote about the museum. As a result, archive, history, abstract forms, temporality, narrative are the themes that revolve around the exhibition.“

Two videos projected in large-format installations, Schindler/Glass and panorama, organize the exhibition. In the first film of 2017 Gerard & Kelly explore the unconventional intimacy assumed by the Schindler House, built in 1922 for two couples sharing the same living space in West Hollywood, through the activation of the space by the performers’ bodies. Intimate, couple relationships are some of the recurring themes explored by binomial artists. In their performance timeline, the two dancers, united by a strong emotional bond, evoked their shared memories by circling around each other. Thus, revisiting the obsession with geometric structures typical of minimal dance, the work gave new emotional depth to this legacy.

Horse art squareThis exploration of the intimate continues through two sculptures with broad titles, Transcript 1 (Now she died in front of Whitney/Whitney died in front of LA bike rides// Now she rode cross country/she rode cross country in front of her), and Transcript 3 (Leaving Ohio/Leaving Ohio in front of my baby brother’s curls/my baby brother’s curls in front of the smell of fresh cut grass/in front of the smell of fresh cut grass “he’s selling seashells on the beach”/ “He’s selling seashells on the beach” In front of Sick Zero/In front of Sick Zero Me I was born//my sister was born in front of I saw the ocean/I saw the ocean I was born in front of). Poetic stories of fragments of life unfold in large copper vessels Brennan Gerard and ryan kelly, written in Braille. There is a defining moment of their meeting between them, the story of which takes on a physical, embodied dimension as the viewer is invited to touch the works to read the Braille. “This is not to close the relationship of the couple to others, but rather to describe the model of the couple that exists in the world, in the society.”, comments Brennan Gerard.

Videos shot in emblematic locations, from the Mercantile Exchange to the Cité radieuse

Video panorama, Dated 2021, in turn, raises the same questions raised by the colonial overtones that adorn the panoramic fresco rotunda. Trade exchange In Paris, where Pinault collection settled. The artists’ camera juxtaposes the movement of the three dancers (two of whom are racist) in a gesture both poetic and liberating, subtly portraying the images of alienated bodies and all the symbolism of this painting: Muse singer Soa, recently seen in the show Drag Race France, as well as Guillaume Diop and Germain Louvet of the Paris Opera Ballet. Video received support Trade exchange from a production perspective and filmed in the building prior to the opening.

After him, Gerard & Kelly made a movie Bright Hours, The second part of the film trilogy, which will conclude with the current project, is dedicated to the character of Eileen Gray and was shot in the villa E-1027, which she built in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Not subject to the codes of a dance film, or a musical, or a short film Bright Hours dance fiction is a hybrid format that can be described as fantasy or working hypothesis. Into shining city of Le Corbusier transformed into a boat floating on the waves with the stage, Gerard & Kelly reimagines the meeting of the dancer with the master of modern architecture. Josephine Baker, took place on a cruise liner in 1929. Le Corbusier, played by the actress at the beginning of the film Jeanne Balibarcites some excerpts from his writings that refer to the body… Beginning with this obsession with the biological and human proportions on which the great architect based the dimensions of his constructions, researches conducted in recent years have fascinated Le Corbusier. fascist ideology.

In Bright Hours, Gerard & Kelly Imagine how his ideas might have changed during his meeting with Josephine Baker (the content of which we do not know). “We imagine that in his relationship with an African-American dancer, he could have moved from a purely theoretical view of the body to an abstract, disembodied, reality of the body.continues Brennan Gerard, portrayed on screen by young actress and dancer Emara Neymour-Jackson. Josephine Baker Teaches Le Corbusier the basics of Charleston. The magic of fiction works through dancing, real bodies joined by star dancer Germain Louvet. Americans living in France since 2018, Gerard & Kelly but also through its history it embodies the displacement and the meeting of cultures. They will reactivate their performance in March 2023 to reflect their challenges. state, It dramatizes the ideological underpinnings of the nation in terms of gender, race, and sexuality by repeating and depleting symbols of American patriotism.

Gerard & Kelly. Ruins” exhibition at Nimes Carré d’Art until March 26, 2023.

On Saturday, February 11, 2023, the Carré d’art Le Sémaphore is hosting a screening of Bright Hours at 11:30 a.m. and a guided tour of the exhibition with the artists and Lou Forster at 3:00 p.m. signing the directory.

“State of” performance at the Carré d’art hall in March 2023.