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LAURENT GRASSO
Inauguration Galerie Perrotin, Seoul

28 April – 28 May, 2016
Opening Reception: Thursday 28 April, 6-8pm
Inauguration Galerie Perrotin, Seoul

Galerie Perrotin is pleased to announce the opening, on April 28, of its Seoul space at 5 Palpan-gil, Jongno-gu district, in the heart of the galleries and museums area, nearby the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Daelim Museum, in front of the Blue House/President’s residence and the Gyeongbok Palace. The 180m2 space will include a bookshop that will display the editions and books printed by the Gallery.

Laurent Grasso will present the inaugural exhibition from April 28 to May 28, 2016 followed by a solo show by KAWS from June 2 to August 27.

At the crossroad of heterogeneous temporalities, geographies and realities, Laurent Grasso’s films, sculptures, paintings and photographs immerse the viewer in an uncanny world of uncertainty. The artist creates mysterious atmospheres in which the boundaries of what we perceive and know are challenged. Anachronism and hybridity play an active role in this strategy, diffracting reality in order to recompose it according to his own rules. Fascinated by the way in which various powers can affect human conscience, Laurent Grasso tries to grasp, reveal and materialize the invisible. Ranging from collective fears to politics, through electromagnetic or paranormal phenomenon, the artist reveals what lies behind the commonly perceived and offers us a new perspective on history and reality.

In this vein, the core of this exhibition, the artist’s new film « Elysée » with an original soundtrack by Nicolas Godin suggests a subtle reflection on the perpetuation of the aesthetic signs of power. Unveiling the “Salon Doré”, personal office of the President of the French Republic, the camera lingers and grazes the XIXth Century gilded decorum (while the Elysée Palace has been erected in the XVIIIth) but also the contemporary objects with a certain intimacy which creates a temporal telescoping and displacement.

Others indexes and representations of power are scattered in the exhibition including a hieratic white marble “hand of Justice”, one of the regalia attributes of the kings of France, and the film Soleil Double which shows the emergence/apparition of an ominous double sun through the imposing fascist architecture of the uncanny Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in the EUR district in Roma (trace of the Mussolini era). The golden hue, the absolute, eternal and universal symbol of divine and power, prevails from the shimmering background of the oil paintings on panels reminiscent of Flemish and Italian primitives to the XIXth Century’s style visions of the Salon Doré, through the golden wood Anechoic Wall and the two brushed brass discs.

Laurent Grasso has presented his work on the occasion of numerous solo exhibitions around the world : In 2013 at Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montréal; in 2012 at Jeu de Paume, Paris; in 2011 at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. and Bass Museum of Art, Miami; The Horn Perspective at the Centre Pompidou and Gakona at the Palais de Tokyo, both in Paris in 2009.
Laurent Grasso did spectacular projects in public space such as in 2012, the neon “Du Soleil dans la Nuit”, which was shown for Nuit Blanche on the top of the Samaritaine building in Paris. His neon “Infinite Light” was installed in 2008 at the Hunter College in New York. The following year, he presented the architectural project Nomiya, installed for two years on the top of Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Laurent Grasso’s recent monumental and permanent installation “SolarWind” on the walls of the Calcia silos bordering Paris’ 13th district has been inaugurated last January 2016.
His work is featured in many collections across the world such as National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea ; Leeum Samsung Museum, Seoul (a large scale neon Installation “Memories of the Future” from 2010 on the facade of the Museum) ; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’art Moderne/Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.
In Korea, Laurent Grasso has participated in the Gwangju Biennale (2012) and Busan Biennale (2006 and 2004), and to different exhibitions at Daejeon Museum of Art (2012), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (2011), Leeum Samsung Museum, Seoul (2010).

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