Galleries in Paris

Architect Yona Friedman and artist Jean-Baptiste Decavèle continue their
collaboration in their second exhibition at galerie Anne Barrault, which follows on their joint project around the fictional territory Balkis Island in 2009. The first phase of …&, iconostases 25 i.s. comprises videos and photographs, objects and sculptures by Jean-Baptiste Decavèle arranged around Yona Friedman’s maquette Il ponte della libertà, a project for a ‘ville spatiale’ on the bridge that links the Italian cities
Mestre and Venice.
Decavèle’s video Il ponte della libertà shows Yona Friedman building and
taking apart his maquette. The viewer notes the swiftness and ease with which this
architecture can be constructed and deconstructed—all of the elements of the maquette are neatly stored in a few cardboard boxes—but the film also provides a glimpse into the architects creative environment, filled with other
maquettes, maps and murals, paper-cut outs accompanied by his ‘Simple Truths’ afffixed to the walls of his home.
The title of this exhibition…&, iconostases 25 i.s. conjoins the movement of film and photographic images to the iconostase, a mobile, adaptable and evolutive structure
for the presentation of works of art, based on the iconostasis, a portable screen or wall that historically served in churches as a support for icons. Friedman has worked on his own concept of the iconostase for at least 50 years.
His is formed out of circular polyhedrons that can be linked together in
what he calls a ‘space chain’ for holding art works. Decavèle’s video Iconostase 25 i.s.,
filmed from the heights of a cherry picker, documents Friedman circulating in and around the iconostase he built for Art Basel 41 in 2010, the first time Friedman had realized the iconostase on this scale. The video traces this
unprecedented and fleeting installation from beginning to end, without
any editing. Viewed from above, the metal rings of the ‘space chain’ recall the course and the lines of a drawing and the iconostase resembles a topographic map. The architect seems to be wandering through the materialization of his own architectural thinking. This is consistent with Decavèle’s understanding of the role of documentary video here: it can in no way serve as a substitute for the realization of one
of Friedman’s architectural projects, but it can signify a certain
formalization of his ideas.
The walls of the gallery have been papered with cardboard, in order to play with questions of scale in the gallery, and to reflect upon possibilities for a more
malleable and modular alternative to the white cube/black box for showing Decavèle’s images, like the Steroscopic Views of Balkis Island (2009), co-signed by Friedman and Decavèle.
Vivian Sky Rehberg