Saturday night, two attractive shows open in two cities we cherish :

La Vie mode d’emploi at Sutton Lane gallery in Paris, curated by David Lewis.

1999 at China Art Objects gallery in LA, celebrating its 10 Year Anniversary.

La Vie mode d’emploi

Abstract by David Lewis.

The Chiasmus: Why is the chiasmus the last great form of truth—the only one we have left?

La Vie mode d’emploi: Percival Bartelbooth, the hero of Perec’s great novel, plans to use up his life, and his fortune, without leaving a trace. He has no talent but he apprentices himself for ten years to a watercolorist. He then travels the world for twenty years. At each of five hundred ports Bartlebooth paints a watercolor and sends it back to Paris, where it is converted into a puzzle. Bartlebooth returns to Paris, solving the puzzles one-by-one and then shipping each to the location where it had been painted: there, after twenty years, they are dissolved.

The Chiasmus: The more stringent and mechanical the program, the more human does its author, or subject, become: this is Bartlebooth’s truth. As with the dance, so—always—with the dancer: Perec, a most poignant and ethical writer, is famous for only working with the most rigid, stratospheric constraints. La Disparition was written without the letter E. Each chapter in La Vie mode d’emploi simply describes a room in a Parisian apartment block; the reader moves from room-to-room as a knight on a chessboard. Only by way of these most rigorous, elegant systems can Perec tell of Bartlebooth’s rigorous and elegant puzzle, or game, or life; only by disappearing as a writer can he write the truth of our inevitable disappearance.

La Vie mode d’emploi: “Does he have hands? Does he have a face? Then it wasn’t us.”

The Chiasmus: Not coincidentally, all this takes place at or by the sea.

China Art Objects Galleries is celebrating its 10 Year Anniversary with a show called 1999.
1999 being the key; the year the gallery was founded and the price cap for each work in the show.

Artists in the exhibition:
Andy Alexander, Tom Allen, Justin Beal, Walead Beshty, Amy Bessone, Jed Caesar, Matt Chambers,
Paul Cherwick, Sara Clendening, Mason Cooley, Kate Costello, Björn Dahlem, Sam Durant,
Shannon Ebner, Bart Exposito, Kim Fisher, Jonah Freeman, Aaron Garber Maikovska, Piero Golia,
Mark Hagen, Drew Heitzler, Thomas Helbig, Andreas Hofer, Evan Holloway, Jason Huang,
Chris Johanson, Matt Johnson, Erwin Kneihsl, John Knuth, Sean Landers, Candice Lin,
Richard Lindinsky, Chris Lipomi, Sharon Lockhart, Nick Lowe, Brett Lund, Jason Meadows,
Jodie  Mohr, Florian Morlat, Dave Muller, JP Munro, Ruby Neri, Silke Otto-Knapp, Andy Ouchi,
Seb Patane, Nora Peterson, Antonio Adriano Puleo, Jonathan Pylypchuk, Sean Raspet,
Michael Rashkow, Maeghan Reid, Jennifer Rochlin, Ry Rocklin, Matthew Saunders, Markus Selg,
Brian Sharp, Dasha Shishkin, Pablo Sigg, Natascha Snellman, Frances Stark, Mateo Tannatt,
Rob Thom, Caroline Thomas, Erika Vogt, Eric Wesley, Adrian Williams, Augusta Wood,
Jonas Wood, Thomas Zipp and counting...