Opening Thursday, March 29, 6-9 pm
Riders in the Storm is Victoria Colmegna's first solo exhibition at the gallery and in Paris. Recent exhibitions include Park View, Los Angeles; Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles; @Richard Sides, Berlin; Truth & Consequences, Geneva; and Galeria Marta Cervera, Madrid. She is based in Buenos Aires.
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“In this house we´re born
into this world we´re thrown
like a dog without a bone
an actor out on loan”
Combining references to the culture of celebrities and the life and adventures of Argentine performer and activist Barbara Bianca La Vogue (1970-2018), Riders in the Storm, Victoria Colmegna's solo show in Paris starts from a phrase that Joseph Mashek wrote about Warhol in 1961: "Etiquette is about how to act well (...) because it is concerned beyond utility with the right way of doing something itself."
The show deals with two poles: the riders (hospitality and technical demands that celebrities set as criteria for their performance) and the experience of life as an offering, to which La Vogue, an indispensable name of the artistic and nocturnal Porteña milieu, consecrated himself dramatically. "I see health as a desire, a toast. The word has a lot of weight. If one saw painted AIDS = HEALTH, it would be different."
The show consists of a portrait of La Vogue pointing his finger, torso exposed, face covered by a sweaty t-shirt, and neo-Egyptian stickers inspired by the riders, little quirks that accompany the public life of a celebrity. This is the nucleus of the tribute to the Argentine artist who died on February 2 of this year, the day of Orishá goddess Jemanja from the Yoruba religion, who every year receives her offerings on the beach. Jemanja is a complicated celebrity, very capricious. She likes expensive offerings. The function of the rider is that the other party looks at what the star asks in the contract in detail. It means: evaluate if you are paying attention. As La Vogue said, "I think I'd rather run into a clearing, end up on a cliff, throw myself into the sea and become a mermaid."
Bonny Poon
36 Ave d'Italie
75013 Paris