"The fabric allows me to camouflage, to hide, to dress the white cube of the museum and thereby to change the value systems and the frames of thought" , says Ulla von Brandenburg who deploys all her talent in the dizzying spaces of the Palace from Tokyo, where she is a little at home. In 2012, for the reopening of the museum, she had covered the Agora with a psychedelic work, like a gigantic skate park, which had seduced the public. The 46-year-old artist of German origin, who has been living in Paris for fifteen years, returns today through the front door with a very successful monographic exhibition, in which we find all the components of his work, and well more.
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Happened by a giant and multicolored diaphragm, composed of fabric panels perforated with a huge circle, the visitor is invited to enter a dreamlike and theatrical world. " It is a global work, says Yoann Gourmel, the young curator, like an opera." Large sections of red, blue and yellow fabric punctuate the stages of this extraordinary journey, animated by weekly performances (on Saturdays from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.) of dancers. We totally immerse ourselves in these giant installations of recycled textile and quilts, which abolish the notions of time and space. One can imagine pictures unhooked from a long picture rail, which left only their imprints on a red fabric, in front of large white chalks on the ground, like those of a sculptor. Behind the scenes of art, Ulla von Brandenburg shows us. Then she takes us to the circus with her hoops and her harmonium music. All the way is covered with natural parquet on the ground. Nature is never far away. A large trap, a haystack rises up behind a curtain, "it's a tribute to Van Gogh or Monet," continues the commissioner. Fishing rods, underwater images projected on faded blue sails hung in a labyrinth ... "Ulla abolishes all hierarchy" .
Dream process
In his film shot in 16 mm at the Théâtre du Peuple in Bussang in the Vosges, the artist reveals a little more the dreamlike process which is at the heart of his research. With the dancers and actors who form a peasant community, she stages a popular festival like an ancestral tale. Sitting on long wooden benches, the spectator is transported to an imaginary rural world, where the protagonists sing (in German) by cutting ribbons of fabric to make their costumes. A thousand miles from the concrete maze of the Palais de Tokyo.
The middle is blue, at the Palais de Tokyo, 13 avenue. of President-Wilson (Paris 16th). Tel .: 01 81 97 35 88. Hours: daily except Tuesday from noon to midnight. Until May 17.
Catalog: Palais de Tokyo edition, € 17.
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