Flash Art  n.270  January-February 2010

BOISSY-LE-CHÂTEL, FRANCE

In the last 50 years the relationship between artists and galleries has changed, and the ideological role of the gallery has reformulated. At “Le Moulin” Boissy-le-Châtel, France, Galleria Continua set up an exhibition gathering the works of 44 artists represented by seven galleries (Air de Paris, Galleria Continua, Goodman Gallery, Galerie Krinzinger, Kamel Mennour, Almine Rech Gallery and Esther Schipper.) The works are staged inside and outside an old, reopened factory that has been transformed into a contemporary art venue, which also includes a private space for functions usually reserved for public institutions, will host a variety of scenarios.

The lack of a center turns the exhibition into a rhizomatic structure with a fluidity of different aesthetic realities that nevertheless engage the visitor. Michelangelo Pistoletto resorts to two devices: The labyrinth, which is also the title of the work, and the mirror that the artist has been studying through the years in relation to the definition of the subject in

space and time. The visitor becomes aware of — and shapes himself and the environment surrounding him through — the phenomenological experience of the uncertain and the protean. In the works of Hans Op De Beeck, the depicted places, apparently empty, stage the institutionalized side of anti-utopian narrative. These are all spaces that mirror actual

society, ritualizing contemporary alienation. Daniel Buren’s work participates in a non-osmotic process.

The colored glass windows, besides being exposed sculptures, constitute membranes that separate the outside from the inside. The real discrepancy between in and out is questioned and renegotiated. Loris Cecchini’s intervention Steelorbitalcocoonz (2007) takes an auto-referential and poetic role relative to the entire space.

A few months ago, Galleria Continua acquired an enormous piece of land nearby and will

write a new chapter on the relationship between contemporary art and periphery.