Thomas Fougeirol & Carrie Yamaoka: a crack in everything
Opening Reception: January 10, 6-8pm
Walkthrough & artist talk moderated by Jo-ey Tang: January 17, 6pm
There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in
—from Anthem, Leonard Cohen, 1992
NEW YORK, NY | albertz benda is pleased to present Thomas Fougeirol and Carrie Yamaoka: a crack in everything, a two-person exhibition on view from January 10th to February 16th, 2019. Showing together for the first time, Fougeirol and Yamaoka both employ painting processes that engage with and subvert the protocols of photography. Unengaged with representation, the artists focus on painting’s potential to record the slippage between the indexical mark and the invisible.
Thomas Fougeirol’s work evokes “a space that exists between radiography, photo negatives, painting, and imprinting…a kind of sensitive machine that defeats expectations.” He embraces the liquidity of paint, applying thick layers that create a seemingly unstable skin on the canvas, a laden membrane on the verge of bursting. He registers the imprints of actions and movements on the surface, drawing out an elusive fluidity from concrete and tangible materials.
Carrie Yamaoka actively engages with error and defect. Working on a reflective ground, she seeks to implicate the viewer in the experience of her work to call into question the stability of our perception. The paintings are charged by the chain of incidents that determine their unforeseeable outcomes. Rubbings of the artist’s studio walls, powders cast into rectangular mold forms, and the crawling of paint resisting adherence to surfaces—these are imperfect tactile records that challenge notions of proof.
An enigmatic 1912 photogram by Géro Bonnet, displayed in the gallery, acts as a kind of cipher to Fougeirol and Yamaoka’s exhibition. A non-artist who experimented with darkroom photography at the turn of the 20th century, Bonnet adopted the then-new technology of photography to create visual proofs of the unseen. According to Bonnet, the photograph depicts magnetic waves of energy emanating from a hand. With this seemingly impossible occurrence, Bonnet, like Fougeirol and Yamaoka, might have found the crack in the process – allowing the light to get in.
An essay titled "The Pictorial Act as Efflorescence" by Marc Donnadieu, Chief Curator, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, accompanies the exhibition. Copies are available at the front desk and on the gallery website.
ABOUT THOMAS FOUGEIROL
Thomas Fougeirol lives and works between New York and Paris, where he runs the non-profit exhibition space Dust. He holds a DNSEP from École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. He is represented by Praz-Delavallade in Paris and Los Angeles. He was included in Fifteen Year Anniversary Exhibition at the Margulies Collection in Miami as well as From Pre-History to Post-Every-thing at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. Acquisitions have been made by Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, FR; Fondation Louis Vuitton pour l’art contemporain, FR; Collection Chanel and The Margulies Collection, Miami, FL.
ABOUT CARRIE YAMAOKA
Carrie Yamaoka lives and works in New York City. Currently her work is featured in arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplified at the Beeler Gallery at Columbus College of Art & Design through March 17, 2019. A solo exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Seattle, will open in July 2019. Yamaoka has been featured in Greater New York 2015 at MoMA/PS1, and in exhibitions at the Mannheimer Kunstverein, CAN Neuchatel, MMKA, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Albright-Knox, MassMOCA and Artists Space among other venues. Her work can be found in the public collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.
ABOUT JO-EY TANG
Jo-ey Tang is a Hong Kong-born American artist and curator. He is Director of Exhibitions of Beeler Gallery, at Columbus College of Art & Design. The current season arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplfied, explores the resonances between the individual practices of the members of queer art collective fierce pussy. Tang was curator at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, (2014 and 2015), and was arts editor of n+1 (2009 – 2014). He co-founded The plates of the present, a photogram project he initiated with Thomas Fougeirol in Paris in 2013. He has curated and organized events and exhibitions at FUTURA Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague; Rupert, Vilnius; Chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai; and Praz-Delavallade, Paris. His writing has appeared in Artforum.com, Flash Art, andArtAsiaPacific. Tang has exhibited his work at the Musée départemental d'art contemporain de Rochechouart; Lyles & King, New York; Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris; and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris.
