Berlin – Paris 2011
Motto presents Olaf Nicolai, Blondies @ Librairie Yvon Lambert.
Opening Reception: Friday 28 January 2011. 6pm
On occasion of the third edition of Berlin-Paris, Motto has invited the German artist Olaf Nicolai with a carte blanche for an artist project.
Nicolai has chosen to present his project “BLOND” (and with it its corresponding artist’s book “The Blondes”), for the occasion rearranged in a new installation, “Blondies”, specifically for the situation at the bookstore, using the material that accompanied the originally project for the first time. With this arrangement Nicolai demonstrates in a playful way his conception of an artist’s book as a complex tool whose character oscillates between documentation, artwork and the starting point for new artistic inventions.
For the original project “BLOND” in the city centre of Tilburg / Netherlands and later in Amsterdam a barbershop was installed temporarily. The shop’s special offer – a professional hairdresser who dyed the customers’ hair blond free of charge – was made known by placing advertisements in the daily press. The free bleaching was subject to the condition that each customer agreed to be photographed before and after the bleaching and consented to further artistic use of this documentation.
Instead of featuring product advertisement, the wall and window displays of the salon functioned as display surfaces for an exhibition. In addition to photos of famous examples of the Mise-en-scène of “blondness”, pictures of performances or reproductions of art works (by Andy Warhol, Vanessa Beecroft, Karen Kilimnik, Douglas Gordon, Santiago Sierra, Olaf Breuning and many others) based on the trade mark “blond” were exhibited, transforming the shop into a mixture of a beauty parlour, art gallery and mantelpiece display.
42 of the photographs taken during the project “BLOND” were selected from the collection. They were compiled as an independent art series, “The Blondes”, (2003 / 2004). In the artist’s book “The Blondes” (2005) the photographs are reproduced in original size. The book’s design allows each image to be detached and used individually. The motifs of this series also provide the material for subsequent new works, in which they themselves may also become the screen for new projections. Thereby, the logic of simulation is perpetuated:
Two photographs of the series appeared in 2004 on concert tour posters and on the cover of the new album of the band F.S.K and in 2007, in a shopping street in a Southern German city, all 42 portraits were used as flag motifs.
A selection of books curated by Motto will also be on display.
Librairie Yvon Lambert
108, rue Vieille-du-Temple
75003 Paris
T. +33(0)142 710933
Mon – Sat. 10am – 7pm
www.yvon-lambert.com
www.mottodistribution.com
www.berlin-paris.fr
(image courtesy: Olaf Nicolai, Eigen+Art Leipzig/Berlin)
