Ugo Rondinone: "The Third Mind" Exhibit: Palais de Tokyo: Paris

New York couldn't do it. Whatever the information overload that comes with NY Fashion Week, it was still possible to keep TI's output flowing. But the convergence in Paris of a Fashion Week, tonight's Nuit Blanche and a sporting extravaganza (a Rugby World Cup) has this staid and monumental city crackling with a dynamic energy that made us pass out. It was there first and foremost at Rad Hourani's unveiling this morning in a little gallery on a side street of The Marais. I went prepared to be polite and encouraging and then left shaking from the completeness of vision on the part of one so young. When Vogue Italia cover girl, Meghan Collison stalked out in jet black, hair in the face, head down , purposefully marching , that was it! Jouissance! If you missed it, you missed history. We begged Rad afterwards to bring that complete vision to NY next season. I don't want to over-talk what I saw. I snapped tons of pictures and as soon as I download them onto a disc I want you to see the images over at OTM on MDC for yourself
The joyous overload is also there in an exhibit I saw at the Palais de Tokyo earlier today called "The Third Mind: Carte Blanche To Ugo Rondinone". Described by the Palais de Tokyo press office as " An MRI scan of his influences, inclinations and obsessions, the exhibition is constructed as a stroll through a brain in perpetual activity, going straight to the source of the artist's references and discoveries". Does that breakdown not give you a chill, does it not sound like a mission statement for TI? Rondinone presented a genorosity of vision that includes some 30 different artists, including artists I never had thought about as "artists". I've been completely insomniac for the first 3days here so maybe this was why I was a little emotional when I realized that this exhibit opened my mind to the idea that William Burroughs could be thought as a conceptual artist. The cut-up technique he forged with Brion Gysin is the case of writers shifting words into pure beauty and pure abstraction.

Ugo Rondinone: "I Don't Live Here Anymore" (two of five parts) PH. courtesy of Phillips de Pury and Co.

And this is within the framework of prose. It is an emotional thought for me because it means as a writer, the very visual world of art is generous enough to engage this thing I LOVE : words and writing as part of the practise. I loved this multi-disciplinary show so much with its installations, videos and films, music, performances, photographs I'm going back tommorow during Nuit Blanche to experience all that beauty in a nocturnal context...And speaking of joyous overload, Neal Hamil from Elite North America threw TI a dinner party at Dave's last night that was so much it resulted in that unprecedented thing. A hangoever. Mr Hamil and his Team Elite ate Paris alive this season via girls like Ali and Karli. I'm going to get some sleep so I can be coherent and composed about it all in the morning (and well rested for Nuit Blanche). But suffice it to say, the past 24 hours reminded me very much of the joy of living. It really was that " jouissance" as they say. Tune in tommorow for the prose/pictures.