Group Show: L’Escargot Noir and their New York Friends Present Art in a Valise, July 2010

L'Escargot Noir will be presenting their work in three different venues in New York throughout July 2010.
First, L’Escargot Noir will present the work of six French artists at Niagara Bar at 112 Avenue A in the Village Thursday night July 15th.
One of the artists—Katia Favodon-- will be having a show at NeroDoro Cafe at 395 Classon Ave in Clinton Hill for 10 days in July (7/16/10-7/26/10) of her hand painted Wall Paper designs.
Then we will have a show at a Chashama Window space at 112 West 44th Street between Broadway and 6th. The Show will be open from July 23-August 1.The concept of the show is somewhat summed up in the title "Art in a Valise". We are having the group bring over pieces from France that are easily transportable and may be assembled once in the gallery space,
The title of the show is "Art in a Valise" playing with the concept of creating art for transport, touching on the idea of the globalization of the art world. Each piece of work is a variation on how to play with size and compactability of objects in each artist’s distinct style.
Beyond the idea of simply creating a show of work that is transportable and expands the idea of how different forms of art may be created, molded and transported we are connecting this concept to the purpose of the group themselves, which is to form international collaborations with other groups of artists. They hope to eventually evolve this concept and have collaborating artists come to Paris or Mexico City for upcoming shows.
Below you can find our original proposal. You can also see some of the artists work at their website, http://www.lescargotnoir.com/
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THE EXHIBITION:
Art In A Valise

This group exhibition is intended as a journey, a means of exchange, transformation and exploration through a collaborative show between arts collectives. All six L’Escargot Noir artists share a passion for traveling as well as an interest in exploring a range of artistic forms and medias. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp and his concept of The Box in a Valise they are working on an exhibition with specific constraints keeping in mind size, weight, malleability etc. Simply, they plan to pack their bags with pieces of compact art which will open and expand into a full show once on NYC soil.

Each artist is currently creating new and original works exploring innovative ways to create pieces that are in line with the Art in a Valise concept. With experience in a wide variety of medias—installation, photography, video, large and small-scale paintings, drawings—each artist has created works based in an already developed style and media to fulfill this particular challenge.

Touching upon issues of the globalization of the art market, accessibility of art and culture internationally and the process of arts collectives through an exchange with other NY artists this show will hopefully be the beginning of what plans to be a long endeavor for L’Escargot Noir. Their objective is to travel internationally each year, expanding this concept of Art in a Valise by seeking out and involving other groups of artists in an exchange. The first stop will be NYC, the city where Marcel Duchamp decided to bring “The Box in a Valise ”. Irrefutably NYC—as one of the world’s most international cities with a deep-seated arts and cultural community—is the perfect location to begin this journey.

New York’s architecture provides the ideal backdrop for this exhibition of playing with space through contractible and expandable art. With a crammed skyline and abundance of buildings, NYC is a city built on a landscape with a variety of restrictions in regards to space. It is a place to discover innumerable ways to fill up space and manipulate infrastructure by extending up to the limits of the sky. Similarly, these six artists are exploring new ways to create works within the confines of a single bag, allowing their art the opportunity to take new forms and find their own creative contractible space.

During the exhibition, the artists wish to share their work methods and discuss a number of relevant questions regarding this show and the art world in general through open dialogue. Proposed topics include but are not limited to; Ways in which art can be constrained and manipulated in regards to space; how art and artistic communities may adapt to space, culture, economic circumstances, globalization etc. They wish to discuss exciting new arts and cultural endeavors currently happening on the ground in France and hope to learn about projects New York City based artists are working on; How/if their theories and working methods as individual artists and as a collective differ between New York and France. They currently are in search of another group/collective of artists interested in taking part in this exchange by contributing to the exhibition itself through a number of relevant pieces. L’Escargot Noir hopes to create a meaningful exchange with NY based artists and house a similar collaborative show in the near future with participating NY artists in Paris and Mexico DF.

Artist: Jacqueline BRESSON

Artist: Claire WIJBICK

Artist: Katia FAVODON

Throughout the course of various experiences, Katia Favodon has taken a keen interest in childhoodtales and wonder, beyond worlds that seem poetic, delicious and magical at first sight. She wanted to focus on something more disquieting, on something thornier, darker. This ambivalence is anabiding feature of her work.

In the 'Barbe à papa' installation (meaning literally 'Daddy's beard' and figuratively 'Cotton candy' in French) Katia Favodon works on a locations ambiance,playing with perception and pure sensation. All these appealing,distorted, oppressive elements progressively become deceitful, poisonous, and dangerous...the cotton-candy padded cell, the sharp steel rose, the thermal blankets strewn all over the floor, thebuzz of bees, the smell of strawberries annoy and suffocate us.

Attraction deflects, deceives and simulates... somewhere between illusion and frustration... seeming sweetness... seeming beauty. This realm of dreams, with its ability to turn suddenly into a nightmare, parallels life the way fairy tales expresstruths children can't quite express. (cf. Bettelheim). The fantastic element isdefinitely not a way to flee to a haven of innocence and sweetness, it rather evokes fearsand inner conflicts in shapes that are different from those they usually assume.

Katia Favodon uses space and plays with proportion in order to question our perception of things...(cf. 'Alice in Wonderland’: the girl becomes so small she ends up swimming in her own tears) In her video entitled 'Les automates' ('The Robots') the visual artist still drawson the childhood imagination and on popular culture to affect us on a deeper level. The robot reminds us ofour childhood and the toys we played with, never the less it is an object destined only to be seen as a futuristic freak an empty soulless mass of metal. These frightening, crazy robots, confined in loneliness, thrust into a never-ending state of nervous strain by the repetition, the jerky moves and the screeching noises, are possibly onereflection of our own lives.

J'avais complètement oublié que tu n'aimais pas les chats!' ('I had totally forgotten thatyou don't like cats!') - this ambiguous, ironic title foreshadows, questions, suggests, feeds thethought... sweet and cruel at the same time.In a mocking tone, Katia Favodon converts the Hello Kitty character into a bedside rug 'This tinylittle cat, so cute and so pure' dismembered by a consumer society that corrupts everything.

Artist: Nicolas Jean Roland CORDIER

Nicolas Cordier Jean Roland was born in Clermont-Ferrand in 1978 and began drawing smurfs in kindergarten. He stopped all artistic activity when he learns the death of Peyo, the creator of the famous little blue imps. He eventually continued drawing and producing objects— he hardly describes as works of art— the same day he joined `school of art’, where he attended with a bit of spite because his most secret dream was to be the first man on the moon. Alas the place is already taken. He even graduated in 2003 with a DNSEP, diploma with which he makes a pretty folding origami.Unfortunately since that day, he continues to draw stupid and ugly things but fortunately for us all his pens are often too dry.

Artist: Alexandre AUCOMTE

Alexandre AUCOMTE attended“Les Beaux Arts”from 1998-2003. During this period he increased his artistic language througha multitude of exploration and expérimentation, which give a delicate attractive sense to his work. Indeed, the purpose is to feed a world of bits and pieces--mixed objects--and mutant animals, amateur video and surrealist drawings used to justify the pathetic and nonsensical nature the subject matter.
His work comes most often by a simple procedure that can be repeated until alienation, intended to resonate the difficulty of being, but the need to persist and live.

Exhibitions
2001 : 3rd prize, Cunlhat sculpture competition
Residency, Dompière Besbre.
2002: ''it is for you, it is for me, that is ours'', Clermont-Ferrand
'taste' , Dompière sur Besbre
2003: '' le temps d un week-end 4 '' Bourges.
2004: 1st prize video and 3 rd prize; photo contest entitled ''ridiculous'' at Clermont Ferrand,
'les enfants du sabbat '' Le Creux de l’Enfer at Thiers
''H2O” Vichy',
''Mars Attaquent'' Yzeure
''mythologies'' 13 bis gallery, Clermont Ferrand
2005: '' lejour de la sirène '' Paris
“Mulhouse 2005” Mulhouse

2006-current: Professor of Art in Clermont-Ferrand High
2009-current: Creation of new works

Artist: Jessica LOPEZ

Post-graduated from Clermont-Ferrand's Fine Art School in 2004, Jessica Lopez is a French Visual Artist and Graphic Designer, mainly working with photograph, video and sound as Installation/Performance. Her artistic statement questions the relationship we have to the object,involving distance and intimacy, collectibles as units of a mass andvery personal and private objects. She also works with food through video and our unavoidable organic interdependence with it. Her major works throughout the last 6 years have been displayed in Le Creux del'Enfer (Thiers, France), Centre for Contemporary Art. She collaborated and created a photographic triptych for Eleonore Grave's Synchronicity 07,Central School of Speech and Drama. In 2008, Jessica was awarded an equipment subsidy by the DRAC (Direction Générale des Affaires Culturelles). She is still very much artistically researching through forms of photography, drawing and graphics while being a Computer-Assisted Learning Teacher.

Birth of L'Escargot Noir

L' Escargot Noir was created in 2009 with the purpose of curating a wide variety of artistic projects. The intention is to offer artists an outlet to create and share their work with a wide audience in France as well as internationally. Considering art as a universal means of communication, L' Escargot Noir intends to initiate cultural events internationally encouraging artistic exchange. Through this exchange L’ Escargot Noir believes that art is certainly a way to share diverse ways of thinking, living, expressing our own stories and to carry those different forms across cultural boundaries.

L’ Escargot Noir is currently working on a project bringing 6 French artists to NY to exhibit in the summer of 2010.

L'Escargot Noir
Curators: Marion Sifreu, Katia Favodon
NYC Co-Curator: Jill Ariela Putterman