Paris Exhibition DRAWING BOOKS Les Halles St.Pierre

Wonderful exhibition at one of my favorite Parisian cultural institutions, Les Halle Saint Pierre locate at the foot of the Sacre Coeur church. Ignore the tourists traps, the fabric stores and the funicular and check out the current show Les Cahiers Dessines at this center for "art brut", aka outside art. I loved the main show, however, the sidebar exhibition, Mosner Livresque the work of Ricardo Mosner in the cafe/foyer area, was exceptional and worthy of a post. While the main exhibition continues to the middle of August, the Mosner sidebar exhibition closed March 1st.

On the walls, artworks, including drawings, painting and sculptural, three-dimensional figures and objects by plus a large table like vitrine with many of the artist "carnets" (notebooks) on view. 

click any image to enlarge

Carnets in the vitrine ...

 

 

vasta@earthlink.net

Berlin.2 Kunsthaus Tacheles May 2012

The artist's building, Tacheles in East Berlin is an amazing mash-up of graffiti, street art, outsider art and fine art housed in a former department store on the Oranienburger Strasse. It is on one hand, wonderfully dark and mysterious; on the other, a child-like funhouse filled with the creative energy of individual artists working in studios and in the public spaces that connect them. 

Upon entering, the creative energy jumps off the stairwell walls where every square inch is covered with graffiti, tags and paste-ups. It all spills out onto each floor where corridors leading to the studios and exhibitions spaces and also covered with artwork, stencils and more graffiti as well as lots of art related agit-prop. The "studio" art in most cases is disappointing, almost more sideshow than art, however the energy created by the years of habitation by artists and the remnants of their presence on every surface of the interior of the building is almost overwhelming. 

NB: Visit Tacheles soon! After years of fighting with the owners, negotiating to stay and receiving a series of reprieves, the end has arrived and the building will soon be vacated and demolished. 

Main gallery/exhibition space, exceptional large scale paintings.

Backlit graffitied window

Artist showing his work to visitors in his open studio.

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