Art Of The Day Weekly
#465 - from 23 March 2017 to 29 March 2017
Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, large model, SNBA, 1904, weathered plaster; 182 x 108 x 141 cm. Paris, musée Rodin, donation Rodin, 1916 © Musée Rodin (photo Christian Baraja).
ARTISTS OF THE WEEK
Ballen and Lemmen: the return of the “cadavre exquis”
PARIS – The favourite game of the Surrealist artists was to write poems or draw drawings consecutively among a number of participants, each one continuing the creation without knowing what the previous one had traced or written. South African photographer Roger Ballen and Dutch drawer Hans Lemmen have invented their own version. They demonstrate perfect iconoclasm at a time when intellectual property has become sacred and freely cut, reframe, glue and copy the other’s work to integrate it into theirs. This surprising score, including compositions of classic formats as well as an entirely painted room-grotto, gives disquieting results in which human and animal, normal and abnormal merge into one unique genre.
• Roger Ballen et Hans Lemmen, Unleashed at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, from 7 March to 4 June 2017. The exhibition will be shown at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht in 2018. Catalogue Kerber, 144 p., 38 € (in French and English).