Roven is a French new critical magazine on contemporary drawing edited by Johana Carrier et Marine Pagès.

The first issue will be launched during the Contemporay Drawing Fair taking place in Paris at Carreau du Temple from March 25 to March 29.

Roven approaches the multiple practices of drawing: the “traditional” drawing and, in a wider sense, drawing under all its forms. Whether drawing exists in a autonomous way or as a stage of the creative process, it is a real laboratory of creation, strictly bound to all disciplines and to all supports. The critical approach of Roven emphasizes the way the drawing is practised, used, diverted, referenced, to stimulate the dialogue on this support and more widely on contemporary art.

Roven issue 1 feature the work of Abdelkader Benchamma by Kathy Alliou, Isabelle Cornaro by Mathilde Villeneuve, Kiki Smith by Clément Dirié, Robin Rhode by Béatrice Gross, interview Sam Durant by Lillian Davies, Théophile Bra by Julie Ramos, Landscape of contemporary drawing by Guitemie Maldonado, selection of Jonas Storsve’s books by Aude de Bourbon Parme, interview with agnès b. by Anne Malherbe, feature story on the line coordinated by Joana Neves with contributions of Jacinto Lageira, Chris Sharp, etc.
Artists’ contributions: Marcelline Delbecq, Alexandre Leger, Pierre Leguillon, Rainier Lericolais and Amanda Riffo.

Roven issue 1 also proposes the acquisition of comissioned artwork in limited edition by Marcelline Delbecq, numbered and signed by the artist. (image below)

Marcelline Delbecq, Wonder, 2009
Digital print on Archival paper, 27 x 39 cm

edition of 30, 300 euros

Ghislain Poirier: Get Crazy ft Mr Slaughter [Ninja Tune]

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...

Thursday, March 19, 7:00  pm
ALOUD: Three Lives from LA:

Vanessa Place, Janet Sarbanes, Veronica Gonzalez

Three emerging women writers discuss  using nontraditional forms for an unconventional city, writing a polyvocal landscape  for a polyvocal world, publishing with an independent press, and why women write  LA better than anybody. The event is moderated by Brighde Mullins.

Veronica Gonzalez’s  fiction has been published or is forthcoming in many literary magazines and  anthologies, including Bomb, The Massachusetts Review and  Juncture: 25 Very Good Stories and 12 Excellent Drawings,  an innovative cross-genre anthology she co-edited for Soft Skull Press. twin  time: or, how death befell me, her first novel (Semiotext(e)), received  the 2008 Premio Aztlan Literary Award for fiction.

Vanessa Place is  a writer and lawyer, and co-director of Les Figues Press. She is the author  of Dies: A Sentence, a 50,000-word, one-sentence  novella; the post-conceptual novel La Medusa,  and Notes on Conceptualisms, in collaboration  with appropriation poet Robert Fitterman. Her nonfiction book, The  Guilt Project: Rape and Morality will be published in 2010.

Janet Sarbanes is  the author of the short story collection Army of One.  She has also published articles on the role of aesthetic practice in utopian  and subcultural social formations, most recently in Popular Music and Society,  Afterall and Utopian Studies. An excerpt from her newly completed  novel, Wendy’s America: The Adventures of the President’s  Daughter, appeared in the summer 2008 issue of Black Clock.

Central Public Library
5th & Flower
Mark Taper Auditorium
Los Angeles, CA

Alain Bashung died last Saturday in Paris after years of fighting against a lung cancer. He was one of the greatest French musician/artists France had for decades. He was magnetically beautiful and his voice was the echo of an authentic life. He was discrete, and humble. He was a real star, and a true poet. And it’s a sad sad news now to see him going away. –dp

Les Mots Bleus by Alain Bashung (original song by Christophe, another great French singer)