« DRAFT », A GIANNI MOTTI EXHIBITION AT GALERIE PERROTIN PARIS

By Crash redaction

PARIS’ GALERIE PERROTIN PRESENTS NEW GIANNI MOTTI EXHIBITION

For his second solo exhibition at the Galerie Perrotin, Gianni Motti invests the gallery’s three rooms with an installation named Draft. In the exhibition’s introduction written by Marco Scotini, one thing is made clear: Gianni Motti’s work is still as unexpected and can’t be limited to a one-dimensional interpretation. With Motti, quoting Scotini, « there is never a plan that precedes the work nor is the work ever just the completion of a plan. » Indeed, it has been Gianni Motti’s signature for years to go for the unconventional when it comes to convey an artistic statement. Everyone still remembers Blitz, during the 2003 Prag Biennal, his Roland Garros intervention in 2004, or Big Crunch Clock, 1999, announcing the destruction of the sun with a countdown. With this kind of artistic expression, Gianni Motti never limited himself to the four walls of an art gallery, and rather made a speciality of surprising the public in places where he wasn’t expected (at a ONU session in 1997, on the pages of the Neue Luzerner Zeitung in 2006, or on photographs taken all around the world, his name put on his assistant’s tee-shirt in the 1997-1998 performance Gianni Motti Assistant). But even in the framework of a gallery, Motti’s work couldn’t be reduced to an object frozen in a given moment. By forcing the viewer to engage – often involuntarily – with them, Motti’s installations always blur the line between reality and uncertainty. For this exhibition, Gianni Motti created installations made of razor barbed wires that redefine the notion of space. In one of the rooms, a wall of barbed wires is reminiscent of an iron curtain and gives the impression of separation in this empty, white space. The other two rooms feature cylindric barbed wire installations. One of them goes from wall to wall, creating a feeling of imprisonment, while the other resonates like a dangerous invitation, its linear perspective reminding of a tunnel which knows no exit.

Images above and below:

Draft, Gianni Motti, Galerie Perrotin, 76 rue de Turenne 75003 Paris, from October 22 to December 19, 2015 / www.perrotin.com