Purple Art

[May 24 2016]

A look back at the 1995 show “Pièces Meublées” curated by Bob Nickas at Galerie Patrick Seguin, Paris

Galerie Patrick Seguin will be showing a 21st anniversary exhibition of the “Pièces Meublées” exhibition organized by Bob Nickas, held in the same space, the former Galerie Jousse-Seguin, in 1995.

For this anniversary exhibition, a 6 x 6 meter Jean Prouvé demountable house from 1944 will be built in the gallery, “furnished with art and seemingly inhabited” in the words of Nickas, a “stage- set … in and around which artworks—and visitors—participate.” Many of the works have been paired with pieces of Prouvé furniture and architectural elements, selected by the artists. As such, many of the works on view have been created especially for this project and are being exhibited for the first time. Of particular note is the work by Kelley Walker, for which a pair of the house’s original panels has been temporarily replaced with one of the artist’s ‘brick wall’ paintings, a double-sided diptych which functions as part of its exterior and interior skin. Among the artists included in 1995 who will participate again are John Armleder, Louise Lawler, John Miller, Albert Oehlen, Haim Steinbach, and Rudolf Stingel, and a number of works by the late Franz West are once more part of the mise-en-scène. A poster designed by artist Ryan Foerster incorporates an historic image of the Federation National du Batiment, a government building designed by Jean Prouvé, taken while it was under construction in Paris in 1949. The actual plates that were used in the printing of the poster are paired with one of the building’s window elements, reinforcing a shared sensibility for material, an esthetic of form and function, and a philosophy of reproduction. Jean Prouvé’s oeuvre remains remarkably relevant today, and just as Bob Nickas intended in the first exhibition twenty-one years ago, it continues to inspire artworks that are “lively, unexpected and poetic,” and serve to remind us that art and architecture and design can come together in human terms to heighten our sense of the everyday.