New York

· Catherine Sullivan

· Ann Lislegaard

· Mark Dion

· "Looking at Words"

· Steven Pippin

· Fred Eerdekens

· Glenn Kaino

· Egon Schiele

Los Angeles

· "Splotches and Gouaches"

· The Backroom

San Francisco

· Desiree Holman

· "AB OVO"

Washington, DC

· Yuriko Yamaguchi

Houston

· "I Wish It Were True"

Berlin

· Clarina Bezzola

Dresden

· Olaf Holzapfel

Frankfurt

· Stefan Müller

Hamburg

· Ellen Gronemeyer

· Wade Guyton

Paris

· Matthew Lutz-Kinoy

· Laurent Montaron

· Philippe Bazin

Milan

· Anri Sala

Turin

· Henrik Håkansson

Vienna

· Franz Graf

· Alexandr Rodchenko

Oslo

· "Blankess Is Not a Void"

Elsewhere

· Brian Chippendale and Jungil Hong

· "Spanglish"

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy

YUKIKO KAWASE
8 rue Adolphe Focillon
November 08–January 07

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy's "Un cône nommé désir" (A Cone Named Desire) is an oblique echo of Anthony McCall's well known luminous cones, a recent iteration of which was just on view at Martine Aboucaya. If one places these exhibitions within the same frame of reference, one can see that the artists take very different approaches. McCall makes the cone-as-geometric-figure tangible, presenting it optically. Lutz-Kinoy, on the other hand, presents the cone as an object (from the Greek kônos, pine cone); in the gallery it serves as a tepee of sorts, constructed from fabric stretched over a cardboard frame and surrounded by smaller, cardboard-only cones. This object occupies the central position in the exhibition; on its left, video documentation of a performance shows the artist, dressed in a skin-tight white unitard festooned with green diamond shapes (mirroring those on the sculpture nearby), dancing to old R&B hits. This incantatory movement enhances the enigmatic character of the sculpture, turning the artist into a supplicant engaged in a ritualized affirmation of this strange object.

—Marie Bonnet

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Laurent Montaron

LA GALERIE, CENTRE D'ART CONTEMPORAIN
1 rue Jean-Jaurès, Noisy-le-Sec
November 19–January 21

It has been several years since the young artist Laurent Montaron's last show in Paris, and here he demonstrates, in a very well-articulated exhibition, that it can be wise to stand aloof. Welcomed by Melancholia, 2004, a mute sculpture made from loops of magnetic tape extracted from a "space echo"—a sound machine from the ‘70s—the viewer is everywhere confronted by haunting and enigmatic devices. Nearby, a rumbling soundtrack draws one toward a 35mm film projection (Readings, 2005) that portrays a gigantic, outdated engine room undergoing a slow transformation. Strange subtitles, which seem like prophecies, comment on the metamorphosis; eventually this machine is revealed as an observatory telescope. Elsewhere, despite its apparent quietness, the still-image projection Spit, 2004, plunges the viewer into hypnotic contemplation. The life-size image of a woman sitting precariously on a skyscraper balcony and spitting into the void appears to be pulsating. The effect is produced by no more than the rotating blades of a fan in front of the projector, but even if the trick is revealed, one's gaze is caught by the image's tangibility, a feeling not unlike encountering a Jeff Wall photograph for the first time.

—Charlotte Laubard

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Philippe Bazin

GALERIE ANNE BARRAULT
22, rue Saint Claude
October 29–December 23

As "citizens of modernity," Susan Sontag claimed, we are "schooled to be cynical about the possibility of sincerity." Paris-based Philippe Bazin's faith in the ethical implications of portrait photography forces us to entertain that very possibility. For two decades, Bazin has photographed anonymous faces: newborns, adolescents, the elderly, workers, militants, prisoners, and the insane. Bazin always shoots his subjects in relationship to institutional contexts—the hospital, the prison, the school—that are not evident in the final works. His current show, which includes recent photo and video work focusing on landscapes, brings this idea of absent context forcefully into play. Five black-and-white portraits of men who have done time (Détenus, 1996) are hung in a row facing Loos, 2005, a video of the grounds surrounding the prison. Between them, monitors, arranged in a straight line, display fixed perspectives of the areas in and around other French prison towns like Fresnes and Villepinte. They are not, but could be, views from prison windows; the stillness of the camera and the unchanging banality of the scenes suffocate. In the back of the gallery a large color image of a Scottish seascape titled Uist Island, 2002, provides respite, until you realize that as you move closer to any horizon, it moves further away.

—Vivian Rehberg

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