We dream under the same sky

The refugee crisis needs all our collective support and understanding. At the Palais de Tokyo, the art world is coming together to help the cause with an auction event that will benefit 5 NGOs: Migreurop, Anafé, La Cimade, Centre Primo Levi and Thot.

A massive humanitarian crisis is impacting the European borders and its seismic effects threaten to shake the very fabric on which the modern world was developed. People are fleeing their lands to take refuge in safer countries. It is an all-consuming-crisis in the history of modern civilization. The scale and impact of the tragedy can be felt on both sides of the border. Refugees mired in the deafening sadness of war desperately trying to escape from the horrors back home and the host countries grappling with solutions to deal with these massive waves of humanity.

It is a struggle on many fronts, political, ideological and psychological. The largest push to fight this crisis has to be on the humanitarian side. We Dream Under The Same Sky rallies artists, thinkers, museums, galleries, collectors and other intellectual influencers to bring about a more sensitised awareness on the issue and raise funds to support 5 key NGOs at the forefront of facilitating and helping in the refugee crisis. Artists have donated their work with key inputs from Christie’s to enable this benefit auction.

Artist, Rirkrit Tiravanija created a new work entitled WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY, and the event borrows its name from his work.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled 2017 (We Dream Under The Same Sky, New York Times, January 26, 2017), 2017

Rirkrit Tiravanija often questions the format of the artworks and the exhibition system. With a mix of performances, sculptures, installations, he transforms the artistic space into a place of social interaction, often dotted with meeting points, encounters and exchanges. Frequently immaterial, his work invents new connections in a world based on reciprocity, conviviality, and hospitality. Whether transforming art centers and galleries into banquets, printing workshops or pirate radio stations, the artist enjoys overcoming the usual spatial and temporal limitations of the “white cube.”

For the auction, Rirkrit Tiravanija created a specific work that gives the name of the action. Generously offered by the artist, this new work is titled: Untitled 2017 (We Dream Under the Same Sky, New York Times, January 26, 2017). On this unique work, Rirkrit Tiravanija pursues his series of DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY paintings. As a possible answer, he hand-painted the letters “WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY” over the January 2017 edition of the New York Times reporting on Donald Trump’s “Immigration Ban”.

Adel Abdessemed, Chicos, 2015

Since the beginning of his career, Adel Abdessemed tackles the themes of displacement, extremism, violence and cruelty in very direct and immediate ways. In his work, that often blends beauty and brutality, he reinterprets real-life situations, stories, experiences and practices to reveal concerning underlying realities.

For this auction, Abdessemed donated Chicos, a sculptural group that shows two young boys smiling as they point guns at each other. The scene derives from a news photo. The content of a “media icon” is thus developed in three dimensions, where the two figures face each other with the same gesture, right arm stretched out. Instead of imposing a value judgment, the composition captures the uncanniness of the situation. From the beholder’s standpoint, the boys’ ages, smiles and game-playing coexist with images of child soldiers that are now common in media archives. The difference in age between the two children suggests the many potentials of guns, ranging from play to threat, from joke to death. The weapons, handled by two children in civilian clothes, assume the role of deadly toys, as if their nature was revealed in this ambivalent situation. Barefoot and bald, the two boys cannot be linked to any specific context. Rather, they host a nexus of different memories, emotions, and possibilities: playful fun and deadly menace, entertaining game and serious training, freedom and compulsion. These various polarities exist in a state of virtual potential. White ceramic brings a sense of fragility and delicacy to a scene where a potentially deadly gesture is played out as a joke, simultaneously innocent and dangerous.

John M Armleder, Four Gates, 2014

Hailed as one of the most influential Swiss artists of his generation, John M Armleder has been creating imaginative work that defies categorization. Armleder is mostly associated with the Fluxus movement, the 1960s-conceptual group that paved the way for modern-day performance art and is known for sculptures, installations, and paintings that blend pop culture and design influences. Generally characterized by a sense of deep interconnectedness between life and art, and the appropriation of objects and quotes, his work is loaded with a set of influences and references which elude the modernist vernacular as well as any form of classification.

Offered by the artist for the benefit auction, Four Gates is part of his famous Puddle Painting series, where the layering process follows the one used for the Pour Paintings. It consists in pouring a vast quantity of various materials and other inappropriate chemical substances over the surface of large canvases that are laid at; which eventually oxidize, affecting the painting in an unhoped for and unpredictable manner. To create this mesmerizing work, the artist departed from the fundamentals of painting, summoning a variety of chemicals, pigments, and techniques.

Nairy Baghramian, Wastebasket (Bins For Rejected Ideas), 2012

Nairy Baghramian is known for her masterful sculptures and in situ installations that use, dismantle and reveal the human body and its gestures. In relation to interior architecture and design, the artist constantly questions the social and political significance of places around her and the exhibition space as such, approaching questions of institutional critique.

Waste Basket (Bins for Rejected Ideas) takes the form of a waste paper basket with wire mesh and an orange base, which one can imagine, conceals the ideas and unrealised projects dear to the artist.

Neil Beloufa, Montreuil Studio View, 2017

Neil Beloufa uses stereotypes (cultural fiction) or exotic imagery (decorative fiction) by associating them with codes of cinematic illusion that take on a documentary value. His gaze is focused on the blind-spots of the camera, on the other side of the set. He uses the construction of fiction to devise his exhibitions. Economy of means, recycling of materials and ingenuity characterise an ambitious production, which is anchored in the social and environmental stakes of his time.

For the benefit auction, Neil Beloufa offers Montreuil Studio View, an intense colored resin painting. Made from falling materials assembled together, the work is part of a recent series of the artist evoking views of his studio in the suburbs of Paris.

Abraham Cruzvillegas, Self Constructed Upside Down Shelter, 2017

Abraham Cruzvillegas explores the economic dynamics of the temporary, handmade and recycled objects. His work “Autoconstrucción” refers to his experience in Ajusco, a neighborhood in Mexico City where he grew up and participated – during the first 20 years of his life – in building the house of his parents. The house was built with recycled materials and improvised techniques, all amid an economic and social fragility.

For the auction, Abraham Cruzvillegas offered a new work specially created for the occasion. Made on plasterboard, it represents a map of the world upside-down and on which the borders have disappeared under the copper leaf.

Jimmie Durham, Encore Un Essais, 2017

From January to May 2017, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, organised a retrospective of Jimmie Durham’s work. Now on view at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, until October 2017, the retrospective will be presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (November 2017 – January 2018) and at the Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada (March – August 2018).

“For me, broken glass shows the true qualities of glass. It vibrates. It scares us. To encounter broken glass is like meeting a dangerous wild animal. It has a constant energy; energy that cannot fit into our world. Working with molten glass at CIRVA in Marseille, I learned that glass often breaks as it cools. We think that is because it cools too quickly or unevenly or something. But that is only descriptive, not really explaining what happens. There is a great inner tension in glass. I guess that is because it is moving slower than the universe.”

Matias Faldbakken, Untitled, 2017

Matias Faldbakken studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen as well as at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. In 2005, he represented Norway in the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennial. He also exhibited his work at the Whitney Biennial, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the National Museum in Oslo, the Sydney Biennial, the Consortium in Dijon and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, among others.

For the auction, Matias Faldbakken offers a new work created for the occasion and made with a sheet of newsprint on a plaster slab. It depicts three versions of an old Mustang commercial featuring a surfer facing the figure of George Stubbs’ zebra. Faldbakken offers four stuttering representations loosely grouped around the notion of “horse power”.

Isa Genzken, Geldbild, 2014

Since the 1970s, Isa Genzken’s practice has encompassed sculpture, photography, installations from recycled objects, drawing, and painting. Her work is inspired by different aesthetics such as of Minimalism, punk culture and assemblage art to confront the conditions of human experience in contemporary society and the uneasy social climate of capitalism. Although her approach varies greatly, Genzken has maintained a striking common thread and internal truth to both her vision and her works themselves.

In a new series of paintings, Isa Genzken employs motifs from the capitalistic language to explore themes of self and social-examination. In Geldbild, Genzken takes money as a medium itself, a xing notes and coins of various currencies and denominations to the canvas. She uses the tools of a profit-driven society in her most direct and literal engagement with its principles. Genzken disassociates money from its role as currency and encourages an appreciation of it as a material object, as a social artifact, and for its symbolic connotations.

Wade Guyton, Untitled, 2016

“Wade Guyton is one of the most influential representatives of a generation of artists who reflect on and produce images in a digital era. Although some of his works question the structure and the language of painting, in the traditional sense of the word, they radically alter the codes and the modes of production. Guyton’s paintings are indeed realised by passing canvases through huge inkjet printers several times in order to obtain patterns and lettering. Errors, drips and misprints are part of the composition process and ensure the uniqueness of the result.”- Nicolas Trembley, “Wade Guyton”, Le Consortium, Dijon and MAMCO, Geneva, 2016

For the auction, Wade Guyton offers a new painting from The New York Times Paintings series. He selected a NY Times’s front page from December 15, 2016 on which the main article addresses the African migratory situation caused by climate change. In contrast to his earlier minimal compositions, this painting is packed with information as it draws its imagery from the NY Times website. Guyton questions the way a major media company publishes and represents news. Frequent shortages of printer ink produce illustrations gashed by horizontal white bands. Guyton also points a disjunction between brutal news and unrelated advertising. In the top right corner of the canvas, we and the artist’s nytimes.com login, “wguyton1” – as a substitute signature.

Mona Hatoum, Afghan (Red And Orange), 2008

Born into a Palestinian family, Mona Hatoum’s poetic and political work unfolds in a variety of media, including installation, sculpture, video, photography, and works on paper. In the 1980s, in London, Hatoum first became known for a series of performances and video works that focused on the body as a metaphor for a bound system. Since the 1990s, she became well-known for her sculptures ranging from the evocation of the domestic sphere to the public sphere, exposed to conflict and unrest.

Afghan (red and orange), offered by Mona Hatoum for the auction, is a traditional handwoven Afghan carpet. The pile on the surface of the carpet is plucked in areas and looks as if it has been moth-eaten or eroded in some way. The large recessed patches reveal a map of the world using the Peters Projection which is believed to be more egalitarian as it depicts the continents in true proportion to each other.

Glenn Ligon, Stranger Study #29, 2017

Glenn Ligon has a wide-ranging multimedia art practice that encompasses painting, neon, photography, sculpture, print, installation and video. Best known for his monochromatic and highly textured text paintings that draw their content from American history, popular culture, and literary works, his work explores issues of history, language, and identity.

For the auction, the artist offers a painting from the series entitled Stranger which he began in 1996. This body of work refers to the essay by James Baldwin, Stranger in the Village, published in 1953. Excerpts from this text, History and Status of the American Black Man, are transcribed on Stranger Study #29 and then covered with coal dust.

Annette Messager, Corps À Corps, 2016

Annette Messager is one of the most important French artists of her generation. Since the 1970s, she developed a visual vocabulary linked to intimacy, femininity, feminism and the body through a singular vision of domesticity. Sometimes with a disturbing and macabre lightness, Annette Messager has developed a practice which incorporates sculpture, drawing, and installation, which stands against the codes of our patriarchal society.

Since the end of 2015, Annette Messager has progressively put drawing at the heart of her work. In 2016, she dedicated an entire exhibition to drawing at the Marian Goodman Bookshop in Paris. In this perspective, she created Corps à Corps, with black acrylic paint treated like a wash on arch paper. At first sight, the drawing represents two genderless bodies facing each other, meeting at four points of contact. The body holds a prominent place in the work of Annette Messager. She often fragments it, isolates organs or limbs and even eviscerates them. Corps à corps breaks with this logic of dismemberment as it represents two whole bodies, two silhouettes are seen in profile that come into contact through fine bridges drawn at the level of the mouth, chest, sex and feet. The mirror image of these two silhouettes recalls the Rorschach tests on which Annette Messager previously worked.

Gabriel Orozco, Fleurs Fantômes 64, 2015

Gabriel Orozco has emerged from the early 1990s as one of the most important artists of his generation. Constantly on the move, without a studio set, he rejects the national or regional identification and draws his inspiration from the places where he lives and travels. His work is characterized by a strong interest in the urban landscape and the human body. The boundaries between the art object and the everyday environment are deliberately blurred, art and reality deliberately mixed.

“Gabriel Orozco visited the old guest apartments of Prince and Princess de Broglie (the last private owners of Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire) for a few moments when his gaze was drawn straight to the torn wallpaper remains – so discreet that they were no longer noticed. In his fascination with the remnants of the old tapestries that once graced the walls of these rooms – closed off and forgotten about since 1938 – Orozco devoted hours to studying the palimpsest of the oral tapestries, still hanging on these old walls, photographing them over a considerable amount of time whilst listening to the echoes of ages past. (…) The artist, whose work is inspired by the quest for traces, remnants, marks left by men, has chosen an approach that looks back at the history and memory of the château at Chaumont-sur-Loire.” – Quotes from the exhibition’s catalogue by Chantal Colleu-Dumond.

Laure Prouvost, This Pineapple Fills Sea Sick From All The Travels It Has Done, 2016

An archivist of images, objects, words, crafts, fictions and documents, Laure Prouvost captures the daily flow of images and texts that assail us, in order to isolate the extraordinary associations and combinations that will specifically serve her stories and the chronicle of her work in general. Although she plays with the effects that these incidences and accidents provoke, the realistic perspective of an ideal world can be glimpsed in the generosity and the uncontrived fantasy and exhilaration that she brings to her work.

Humorous, lighthearted gestures couched in the language of conceptual art statements, these relics serve as leftovers from Prouvost’s films. Seemingly everyday objects – a glass, a shoe, an orange, a pineapple – are repositioned by the artist, who offers ludic suggestions as to what they are, what they could be or what they could have done. The work offered by the artist for the benefit auction sale is a great illustration of this practice.

Ugo Rondinone, Ersterseptemberzweitausendundelf, 2011

Ugo Rondinone is a multidisciplinary Swiss artist who has been known for over twenty years for his paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, sound pieces, and installations, as well as his talents as a curator. Master of forms and techniques, his works often have a meditative, hypnotic, even melancholic scope. They appeal to the contemplation of everyday life, but also to archaic rituals, referring to Art History, to the codes of advertising and popular culture.

The work donated by the artist, whose title is its date of creation, September 1st, 2011, Ersterseptemberzweitausendundelf, is a vast starry night, which is part of the constellation of the artist’s visual and mental landscapes. In this work, we find the idea of cycle, the sublime and immanence. He also questions the understanding of the man’s place in the universe, wonders about vertigo, infinity and the beauty of natural phenomena, always in a romantic vision.

Anri Sala, Le Jour De Gloire, 2017

Anri Sala’s early videos and films mined his personal experience to reflect on the social and political change taking place, in particular in his native Albania. Sala has attached a growing importance to sound, creating remarkable works in which he recasts music’s relationship to the image. Linked to this development is Sala’s long-standing interest in performance and particularly musical performance.

For the auction, Anri Sala offers a triptych. Three drawings of four bitten apples embody the notes that accompany the words “Le Jour de Gloire” in the lyrics of La Marseillaise. The bites, like fingerprints, are unique and belong to the refugees invited by the artist to a three-day workshop organized with Kurt-Kurt in Berlin. During these sessions, the artist and the refugees produced objects, drawings and photographs. The images are created through drawing into consecutive layers of wet ink applied onto stone paper, which is characterised by its lack of absorbency — the liquid slowly dries on the surface of the paper. Le Jour de Gloire creates a dialogue between the concepts of individual and nation, unity and fragmentation, alienation and belonging, identity and integration, new beginnings and great uncertainty.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #553, 2010-2012

Considered one of the most in influential artists of her generation, Cindy Sherman is a major figure in the art world since the late 1970s. Throughout her career, Sherman portrayed herself using photography; modeling her own body with diverse devices, costumes, make-up and wigs. Distorting gender roles, she questioned the notion of identity and self-representation. With a satirical aesthetic, Sherman criticizes the construction of stereotypes that are prevalent in the media, commercials and the fashion industry.

For the auction, Sherman donated a self-portrait, strongly representative of her work. The work depicts Sherman as a middle-aged woman with exaggerated makeup, styled as if on a movie set with a dramatized artificial sunset of overwhelming acid tones in the background.

Rudolf Stingel, Untitled, 2015

Since the beginning of his career in the 1980s, Rudolf Stingel has been constantly questioning abstract or figurative painting. More precisely its surface, thanks to an in nite quest around its patterns and textures. Stingel questions its place in space, its relationship to time and memory. Whether he considers a Rococo wallpaper, a carpet, a photograph taken by another, or covers his canvases of silver or gold, his only goal remains to abolish and extend the borders of his medium.

The work offered by the artist for the auction consists in the motif of his famous series using Oriental carpet patterns. The carpet appears as the ghost of a photographic image, its materiality becoming the ornamental presence of a painting.

Sturtevant, Lichtenstein Study, 1988

In 1965 and based in New York, Sturtevant began to reproduce paintings and objects created by her contemporaries. Sturtevant’s drawings from the 1960s provide one of the earliest testimonials of her approach. They provide a substantial insight into the foundation of her practice as an artist. Studying these drawings helps in understanding the historical tradition of reproduction and repetition in contemporary art. More recently, Sturtevant has evolved a highly structured and rigorous exploration of current events making multi-screen video works, and installations exposing the simulacrum that is as much an attack on arts media/advertising dimension as the corrupt power structures that surround it.

For the auction, Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery offers Lichtenstein Study, a drawing from 1988 with color pencil and graphite pencil on paper. It represents a study on Lichtenstein’s work and his famous women’s portraits.

Martin Szekely, Artefact, 2011

Martin Szekely is an inescapable figure of contemporary design. Enigmatic and powerful, his creations have been recognized for more than forty years. Whether it be his industrial productions or his precious conceptual works, Szekely employs the essence of materials and the history of each element as his subjects.

For the auction, Martin Szekely offered the unique prototype of Artefact Side table, where for the first time in his work, he directly refers to nature. The series is composed of a coffee table and a pair of side tables, the quartzite tray, raised by three fine golden feet and has been developed from a pebble found on a beach in Normandy. Once chosen, it has been digitised, adapted to the scale of the furniture, and then cut in identical form in a block of hollow stone. With this work, Szekely materialises the link between historical reflection, inspiration, and vocation of the object and thus opens a new chapter of his work which questions the relation of the contemporary world to nature: model or artifact?

Danh Võ 2017

Danh Võ examines how cultural values, conflicts, and traumas are constructed and inherited through work inspired both by his own experiences as well as historical and political events. When he was a child, Võ’s family fled Vietnam and settled in Denmark. Võ’s work illuminates the interwoven strands of private experience and collective history that shape our sense of self. Using both historically rich readymade objects and personal details that directly and indirectly touch on his own life experiences, Võ examines the larger implications of how meaning changes with context, as well as how objects accumulate symbolic weight. For the auction, Danh Võ created a new work on cardboard.