ART

« INTO THE WEST» A LAS VEGAS ARCHAEOLOGY, NEW MEXICO BY FRANK PERRIN

By Crash redaction

Las Vegas, New Mexico: this small town in the American West emerged from the desert at the end of the 19th century, rising to prominence with the arrival of railroads and simultaneously becoming the target of many infamous gangsters, including several iconic figures like Doc Holliday, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid. What was once a land of railway bandits is now the ideal setting for film and photo shoots, as well as the handful of legendary artists who have adopted this hamlet as their arid retreat. Indeed, this unique district has exercised a singular magnetism on people from every background. The result: within these mountain- ous desert landscapes, we can no longer distinguish where reality stops and fiction begins. The Western, with all its characters, legends, and its place in the construction of American mythology, resonates in every corner here…

Immersed in this terrain for a two-week residency at Mayeur Projects, located in what once served as the prison cell of Las Vegas, New Mexico, whose illustrious inmates have included one Billy the Kid (among others), Frank Perrin endeavors to dig deeper into the mythology tucked away within these vast expanses. Seizing this Far Away Wild West that seems too cinematic to be true, this desert that seems to have frozen in time the most emblematic images of American legend, this Wild West of fear and fantasy, Perrin recreates and reactivates a space-time lying on the border between a more glamorous past and a present full of mirages.

Frank Perrin

Frank Perrin has spent the last ten years exploring the notion of Postcapitalism and compiling a compendium of our contemporary obsessions. From Joggers, and Yachts to Fashion Shows Postcapitalism is a metaphysical flipbook of the fundamental ideas of our era, where each photography becomes a new landscape of the unconscious and desires of today

Frank Perrin was formerly a philosophy teacher and an art critic. He started the photographic series of the Joggers in 1998 and the Fashion Shows in 2003. After founding the art review «Bloc Notes» in the early 1990s he began taking photographs. He is also the founding director of Crash magazine. Frank Perrin’s work was featured in the Daelim Museum, Seoul, Korea at Contemporary Art Museum les abattoirs Toulouse, and recently new works at Centre Pompidou Metz and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt.

Mayeur Projects

Founded by French collector and entrepreneur Christian Mayeur, Mayeur Projects is a contemporary art gallery, supporting emerging as well as estab- lished artists. Privileging art that is above all an experience, our aim is to create a context of encounters between artist and viewer, the object and the body, the real and the imaginary, the global and the local, the social and the environmen- tal, the concerns of tomorrow and the concerns of today.

Why Las Vegas ?

A true city of the Old West, Las Vegas was an important stop on the railroad line between Los Angeles and Chicago, making it at one time the most important city in New Mexico. The turn of the century Las Vegas boasted all the most modern amenities, as well as two Harvey Hotels and a Carnegie Library and a reputation as a hideaway for outlaws such as Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday.

Today, with the re-opening of the Plaza and Castaneda hotels, as well as other projects such as a maker’s space and the presence of the New Mexico High- lands University, Las Vegas is primed for a revival. The energy behind this renais- sance is notably geared towards imagining Las Vegas as a contemporary arts and cultural hub.