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Wolfgang Tillmans - Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us, at the Pompidou Centre in Paris

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This week I went twice to see the big Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, called Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us . One of the best exhibitions I've ever seen. There isn't much point, I think, in posting photos of photos. But once again, and perhaps more than ever, Tillmans has done a brilliant job of curating and designing the exhibition and installing his own work in relation to the space on offer - in this case, 6,000 square metres, where the Pompidou's public library was. Uncannily, it feels almost as if the space had been designed for the works, rather than the other way round. So, rather than focusing on individual works, I've tried to take photos that give a feel for the way he uses the vast space, inhabiting and highlighting the building before it closes for renovation.
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Ali Eslami, Mamali Shafahi - nerd_funk. Seven-year project finally on show at MU Hybrid Art House, Eindhoven

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  Four years ago, already, I posted an article about nerd_funk, and what I saw as the emergence of a whole new genre . In it, I called nerd_funk 'an ambitious, multi-faceted project by Ali Eslami and Mamali Shafahi,' and explained that the aim was 'to curate an archive of thousands of Instagram stories Ali and Mamali see as relevant to their interests (...) and use it as a base of source material for new kinds of experience for users/spectators: immersive experiences, which may be seen as artworks, film, documentary, entertainment, or all of these and more.' These experiences include a major VR component. It has been a long-term project, as reflected in the subtitle - 'A Seven-Year Odyssey' - of the exhibition now on (April to June 2025) at the MU Hybrid Art House in Eindhoven. The installation combines three eight-minute VR experiences with other video-based activities, fairground-style games, a library and an assortment of related artworks, designed as a jour...
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Two good new shows: Liên Hoàng-Xuân - Eleven Planets of UltraBride_OnlineDrift_Core; and Raphaël Barontini - Quelque part dans la nuit, le peuple danse

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Nothing, as far as I know, links these two exhibitions, other than that I liked them both enough to take photos, and make reels of them on Instagram . Liên Hoàng-Xuân is an artist I got to know through Amine Habki, about whom I posted over year ago , before I had the good fortune actually to buy and hang one of his works. They exhibited together at an alternative sort of space, in a disused 70s office block, called the Tour Orion, in Montreuil. Her works blend echoes of traditional Arabic poetry with socio-political themes and aspects of her family and personal life: I believe the figure being serenaded on the balcony in the piece I have at home is her husband, who also features in her videos. Here are a few photos of the current exhibition, at DS Galerie, near République. After the photos, I'll write something about the other show. New exhibitions have opened at the Palais de Tokyo. I can't say I was especially impressed by all of them. Raphaël Barontini's Quelque part dan...
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Iranian 'outsider' art (L'Art Brut d'Iran) at the Halle Saint Pierre

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It's been nearly a year since I posted anything on this blog. After the summer, I might have posted something about Tala Madani 's solo exhibition at EMΣT, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, part of their ' What if women ruled the world?' show, but my photos weren't good enough. I was also getting into the habit of posting about the October art fairs in Paris, but honestly, this time round, I wasn't excited enough to bother, and since then I've been lazy about gallery shows. But this weekend I went to La Halle Saint-Pierre , at the foot of the Butte Montmartre, to see their marvellous new exhibition of a selection of Iranian 'outsider' artists. I loved it. I've written before, on this blog, about outsider art being shown regularly in Tehran's galleries, in particular in relation to Reza Shafahi and Amir Kamand . Some of the artists in this Paris show were already familiar to me from Tehran, some quite new. I didn't have ...
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