Pierre Bismuth

[Pierre Bismuth]

Pierre Bismuth

Toronto, Canada: Art Gallery of York University, 2004

96 pp, 6 x 8”, hardcover

Edition size unknown

The catalogue to an exhibition of collages - both paper and video - at the Art Gallery of York University, from October 8th to November 23rd, 2003. 

Respect for the Dead features the opening scenes from various feature films - The Magnificent Seven, Jaws, Goodfellas, Dirty Harry, Dr No, and Breathless - truncated immediately following the first death. 

Collages for Men involves enlarged glossy images from porn magazines, with the models' bodies covered with white paper garments. 

For Unfolded Origami, Bismuth had an origamist fold and unfold posters, then displayed them flat. The posters include Andy Warhol's flowers, a map of Europe, an advertisement for the a fight between Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton, a cute kitten, and (a concession to the Toronto venue?) a Maple Leaf hockey player. The works are titled for the unfolded origami shape: dog, frog, peacock, yacht, etc. 

The fourth and final piece presented is the main draw here: The Jungle Book Project. For this work, the artist spliced together nineteen different international versions of the 1967 Walt Disney animated classic in such a way that each character speaks a different language.  Mogli speaks Spanish with a Latin American accent, Tigger speaks English, King Louie the orangutan speaks Japanese, Baloo speaks Hebrew, Bagheera the panther speaks Arabic, etc. etc. 

The book closes with two essays: “Why do Jewish mothers...?” by Aaron Schuster and "Chinese Whispers” by Alexander Alberro. These are followed by biographies and an exhibition checklist. 

“The Jungle Book Project comments on the entertainment industry's relationship to globalization. As they do with all of their products, prior to translating the film the Disney Corporation carefully researched the commercial viability of The Jungle Book in a number of languages and countries. The consumer reports seem to have indicated that whereas marketing the film in most European languages would be profitable, this would not be the case with African languages. As a result, The Jungle Book has not been translated into any African language. Evidently, Africa is not yet part of the culture industry’s global landscape. The exportation of the Disney product is relatively easy since the change in the voiceover virtually seamless. Unlike the type of out-of-synch effect that occurs when a film with actors is dubbed, to suture new voices to the animated cartoon figures does not pose problems of coher-

ency or delay. Films like The Jungle Book work equally well in all languages."

- Alexander Alberro

Pierre Bismuth | Things I Remember I Have Done, But Don’t Remember Why I Did Them

Pierre Bismuth

Things I Remember I Have Done, But Don’t Remember Why I Did Them

Berlin, Germany: Sternberg Press, 2017

306 pp., 21.5 x 27 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Subtitled Towards a Catalogue Raisonné, this publication presents a novel and intriguing approach to a career overview. It is comprised of two volumes: a booklet accompanying Bismuth's 2015 solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien, and a would-be-catalogue raisonné.

Bismuth first came to my attention when the Art Gallery of York University presented his excellent Jungle Book Project in October of 2003. A year later, he won an Academy Award for contributing to the story for Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

A few years later, I invited him to contribute a soundwork to the second of the two Mercersound CDs I compiled for Mercer Union. He told me to find a video of Andy Warhol eating a hamburger and extract the audio. It doesn’t make the cut here, but I could very easily see him vaguely recalling the project, but not why. 

Things I Remember I Have Done, But Don’t Remember Why I Did Them - nine years old this month - is out-of-print, but can still be found for its original price.

"Just like the idiosyncratic mix of conceptualism and appropriation refined by Bismuth throughout his career, Things I Remember I Have Done, But Don't Remember Why I Did Them suggests how easily authorship and intentionality can be undermined, even erased—and Bismuth is not exempt from his own treatment.

For his exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien, titled “Der Kurator, der Anwalt und der Psychoanalytiker,” Bismuth invited a different set of authorities to interpret and give order to his works: curator Luca Lo Pinto, lawyer Laurent Caretto, and psychoanalyst Angel Enciso y Bergé. Each has contributed a text to the booklet that focuses on a selection of works and themes according to his own interests and training. Dessislava Dimova's essay provides a general overview of Bismuth's artistic project, discussing the importance of plasticity, iconography, and simulacra in his visual economy. This underlying instability and ambivalence is also reflected in the catalogue raisonné itself: following the example of Honoré de Balzac, who revised his writings on printer's proofs, this publication is released in the process of its own making. It is a work in progress—an incomplete history of the artist's practice that should be supplemented by its readers.”

- publisher’s statement

Pierre Bismuth | End

Pierre Bismuth

End

London, UK: MC Publications, 1999. 

22 pp., 18 x 18 cm., 

Edition of 500 signed and numbered copies

Pierre Bismuth | Something Less, Something More – DIY,

Pierre Bismuth

Something Less, Something More – DIY

Geneva, Switzerland: Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2009

37 × 50 cm.

Edition of 180 copies

Triple groove corrugated cardboard with seven pre-cut discs, a metal stand and instructions for use, in French and English. 

Pierre Bismuth | Where is Rocky II?

In the late seventies Ed Ruscha created a large fake rock and left it somewhere in the vast Mojave desert. He named it Rocky II, after the Sylvester Stallone* film that had just been released. French artist Pierre Bismuth learned of it's existence from a 1980 BBC documentary that he saw in 2006, shortly after winning an Oscar for the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. Bismuth set out to find the rock, with the help of a private detective and two screenwriters.

The artist funded the project with an Indiegogo campaign, whose rewards included a screenplay mailed to your house one page at a time, a list of Bismuth's favourite mystery films, and an invisible drawing. More than fifty thousand dollars was raised.

Where is Rocky II? is the resulting documentary, which also features Michael Govan (director of the LACMA), Philippe Vergne (director of the LA MoCA), philanthropist Eli Broad, Connie Butler (chief curator at the Hammer), filmmaker Mike White (Enlightened, Chuck and Buck) and actors Richard Edson (Stranger Than Paradise), Stephen Tobolowsky (Silicon Valley) and Tania Raymonde (Lost).

For it's US premiere, the film will be screened at LACMA’s Bing Theater on Friday, January 13, 7:30pm, followed by a Q&A with Pierre Bismuth and the main protagonists of the film.

To purchase tickets, click here. View the trailer, here.

* who is currently under consideration by Donald Trump to chair the National Endowment of the Arts. 

Yvon Lambert to close

Sad news:

"Yvon Lambert has announced that he will close his gallery, which he first opened in 1966 on rue de L’Échaudé in Paris with exhibitions that promoted early Conceptual and Minimalist work by artists including Carl Andre and Lawrence Weiner. In 1977, Lambert opened a larger space in the Marais district, showing work by artists like Joseph Beuys, Louise Lawler, and Allan McCollum, before moving to his present space on rue Vieille du Temple in 1986, where he worked with Nan Goldin, Joan Jonas, Jenny Holzer, and Glenn Ligon among others. In 2003, he opened a gallery in New York, which closed in 2011. The dealer plans to devote his attention to his foundation, the Collection Lambert en Avignon, which he opened in 2000 to showcase his privately owned artwork, which includes more than 1200 pieces by contemporary artists."

- Artforum 

Pierre Bismuth | Humming

Humming is 37 minute audio work from 1995, which was published as an edition of 300 CDs by Yvon Lambert in 1997. The disk contains a telephone conversation between the artist and a friend during which only Bismuth's voice was recorded. There is no discernible dialogue, only the non-verbal sounds one punctuates conversation with to indicate listening and attentiveness.

Pierre Bismuth

Pierre Bismuth talks about his Jungle Book video (one of my faves) here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6-suxHSDFM







and his just-announced project for MOREpublishers (Sunday #15) is available here. The offset printed poster is 60 x 84 cm and features one text (Everybody is an artist but only the artist knows it, from 1999) on one side, and another (Technological development is for the time being mankind’s only future, 2011) on the verso. It’s produced in an edition of 100 copies, which are signed and numbered by the artist.

Sunday

Sunday is a bi-monthly 'editorial project' from MOREpublishers, who consider it "a cross between a publication, an artist’s edition, a multiple, and an exhibition." The series includes works by Jonathan Monk, Liam Gillick, Lieven de Boeck, Marijke Van Warmerdam, Maurizio Nannucci, and many others. Forthcoming editions include Richard Venlet, Steve Van Den Bosch and Pierre Bismuth. Each follow a standard format (an A1-size poster folded to A4 size, a colophon, bundled in an envelope) in which an artist is invited to intervene, re-think a work, or make an adaptation.

The series is available in an edition of 100 copies, which are signed and numbered by the artists. They are priced at 60 € each ($80 CDN), or are available as a subscription (6 issues a year) for 300 €. Two of the editions are now listed as "price on request", including the Jonathan Monk piece & Opened by You (below, centre), which I note that Heartfineart has listed at £145.00 ($228 CDN). Art Metropole has a copy listed at the original price of $83 CDN, here. Get it fast.

MOREpublishers is a Brussels-based publishing platform started by Tim Ryckaert and Amélie Laplanche in the autumn of 2009, as an answer to the question "how to organize exhibitions, events, etc, when we don’t have the space for it?”

The latest Sunday edition, by German photographer Jochen Lempert, will be released today.

For more information visit
http://www.morepublishers.be/