The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume will present URANIBORG, a solo exhibition of work by Laurent Grasso. The exhibition, which was curated by the artist in conjunction with the Jeu de Paume's Marta Gili and the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art's Marie Fraser, centers on the artist's exploration of observation as a vehicle for manufacturing reality and enforcing systems of power. URANIBORG will be on view from May 22 through September 23, 2012 and will subsequently travel to the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. A forthcoming catalogue, which will feature a number of essays as well as a conversation between Marta Gili and Laurent Grasso, will accompany the exhibition.
URANIBORG features videos, sculptures, paintings and drawings by Laurent Grasso that explore observation of the heavens, surveillance, “political ghosts” and deceptive beauty. The exhibition, which draws inspiration from Michel Foucault's notion of "de-individualized power" and the panopticon, highlights Grasso's interest in the uncertain relation between time and temporality as well as the mechanisms of paranoia, ambiguity, belief, rationality, fiction and truth. In an architectural gesture that underscores these concepts in his work, Grasso transformed the normally open space of the Jeu de Paume galleries by constructing a long, windowed corridor that segments the space and dramatically alters the viewer's experience of the works. From inside the corridor, the viewer can see only glimpses of the works in the exhibition that they later are able to see fully. As such, the design of the exhibition itself plays with levels of visual access and perception, underscoring the central themes of the works on view. These themes are further addressed in the new film work URANIBORG, produced by Jeu de Paume for the exhibition, in which architecture, mechanisms of power and the voice play a dominant role.
For more information on the exhibition, please visit the Jeu de Paume's website.