Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery
Today is the first day of Pharrell “Perspective” Exhibit at the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery, if you are in Paris stop by and check it out, there are also great exhibits by “Mr” & Bharti Kher. All 3 exhibits will be at the gallery until January 10th, 2009. See below for more info.
Pharrell Williams is one of the most prolific and brilliant music producers of the past ten years. He created the duo “The Neptunes” with his partner Chad Hugo. Together they write songs for artists such as Justin Timberlake, Nelly, Britney Spears, Madonna, Maria Carey, Usher and the Rolling Stones. He also founded his own band “N.E.R.D” (with his childhood friends Shae Haley and Chad Hugo) : the style of the group is ecclectic, from Hip-hop to Indie rock.
From some years now, Pharrell has simutaneously developped a career in the fashion world. In 2005, he partnered with Nigo -the founder of the Japanese brand “A Bathing Ape”- to create tow luxurious clothing lines: one is named “Billionaire Boys Club” and the other “Ice Cream”.The sportswear line is composed of T-shirts, polos, sweatshirts, denim, shirts, as well as accessories. All the clothes are made in Japan in limited edition. Stores open in th UNited States, in Tokyo and Hong-Kong. Eager to gather different styles and to bring together different social classes, Pharrell mixes the worlds of luxury, Hip-Hop and Sport. He attracts the attention of clients as various as students, athletes, actors, musicians and business executives.The venture between Pharrell Williams and Louis Vuitton started with the music of a fashion show at Grand Palais in 2005.The same year, he inspired the sunglasses line “Millionnaire”. Following this first collaboration, he co-signed with Camille Miceli, jewellery designer for Louis Vuitton, twenty-six models for the new line entitled “Blason” marketed at the beginning of the year.
For his first exhibition in a gallery, Pharrell has created some furniture with vibrant colors and slick surfaces. Two chairs will be exhibited: one with the legs of a lion and the second with human legs. They will be produced in different colors, with a choice for the seat in veal skin or leather. The shape of the seat is inspired by the “Eames chair”. Pharrell Williams diverted examples of classical furniture and update them into a sort of Hip-Hop style with his intense colors and sensual material. Pharrell Williams represents the aspiration of a new generation of Hip-Hop artists.
Mr:
With his Lolita figures borrowed from manga imagery, Mr. has made a name for himself in the space separating irony from candor. In this ambiguous representation of pubescent amazement, he has combined the feigned innocence of Nabokov’s heroine with another era and another cultural register. What comes to mind are his works that seem inspired from the figure of the young Heidi in her underwear in the Alpine meadows. Mr. drew from the famous cartoon made by Isao Takahata after a European model (1974), altering it on large format works that deal as much with the cultural self-examination in Japan today as with the probably perversity of a young girl who refuses the victimization of a religious determinism (believe, pray and suffer in silence), in favor of salvation that comes through free will (emancipation through one’s own decisions). First noted as part of the Super Flat manifesto that challenged Japanese culture in terms of the eternal confrontation between tradition and modernity, Mr. works with the paradoxes of a westernized East – as can be seen in his immense canvases that have been exhibited in the last ten years in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, as well as in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, London and Paris.
Born in 1969 in Cupa, Mr. had already explored the status, legitimacy and recognition of artists before joining Takashi Murakami in Super Flat and participating in the Hiropon/Kaikai Kiki collective. This is how it all began. During his three years of art studies, he incorporated everything he had learned during his preparation for the School of Fine Arts: Arte Povera (Italy) and Pop Art through Rauschenberg (United States). In the avant-garde of new painting, in keeping with the “new wave,” and sensitive to the work of Sandro Chia and Francesco Clemente, he created works from all manner of recycled objects that were initially disturbing. Mr. produced 18-hour-long videos featuring celebrity television weathermen, anchormen and announcers. He started sketching Lolita figures on receipts and ticket stubs. Arte Povera: this art of the commonplace to which Mr. consistently returns has brought him critical recognition.
Bharti Kher:
Bharti Kher creates fantastic fables populated by animals awash in a great primal wave of semen-shaped bindis, pantheons of female human-ape hybrids, and spectral hosts in dainty domestic settings gone awry. With the wit and irreverence of a prankster and a mad scientist, she brings a camp sensibility to her fables which unfold against the backdrop of a technological and ecological dystopia where machines, humans, animals, and nature are out of joint. Kher’s hybrid creatures are fabricated from such a dystopian repository which architect Rem Koolhaas defines as “junkspace, a domain of feigned, simulated order, a kingdom of morphing.” Junkspace is a playful and residual spatial disorder that results from the unregulated growth of cities. Through her morphed objects and animals, Kher revels in the discomfort and comedy that result from her encounters with metropolitan and small-town India. Artists engaged with new paradigms of global and national space typically choose one of two paths. They may often reflexively mirror tropes from public culture or retreat into reflective self-inquiries seeking respite from the chaos of the outside world. Kher chooses to reside in-between. Firstly, she draws on her own dual identity as an Indian with a British background. Secondly, she locates her work in-between a society, entrenched in class divisions and prescribed gender roles, that retains a strong desire to be, but has never been, ‘truly modern’ which for sociologist Bruno Latour is also ‘truly hybrid,’ a condition where distinctions between humans and nature, ecology and politics are blurred. Seeking such a blurring herself, Kher finds herself in-between the exterior, a society maladjusted to the vagaries of a global market, and the interior, a world of rituals and repressed desires. For Kher, morphing is a survival technique. It is a unique system of camouflage and deception engaged to resist old patriarchal regimes and to invent new hybrid worlds and hybrid creations. Kher’s creations poke fun at their own trajectory: rootless, as they traverse their in-between worlds. Kanu Agrawal
This is a great collection. Hopefully it comes to the Tri-State so we can marvel at it.
Peace
http://www.myspace.com/jerseyfame
Wish I lived in Paris. I adore the Mr. artwork.
The style you guys have is untouchable. Much props
http://www.mikeymcfly.com
Peep the BBC (British Broadcast Company) interview with Nigo
that chair is very sensual, very dope piece!
Pharrell lookz gawjus on da piccc n i didn no da chair came wii loinz legz 2 wow must look sik n hw weird iz dis im in paris nxt week
x
Hope I am able to find the gallery when I am in Paris lol (not knowing any French doesn’t really help, does it?)
La Classe Absolue !
brilliant design.
& congrats on the exhibit.
will definately be checking it out before 09 hits, the lions got me curious.
how cute…i love the mini bio..
2DAY I WAS IN THE PLACE TO BE!
yes i was at the exhibit I talk with pharrell (I wear the “NICE JACKET”) and i forgot all the questions I wanted to post to you.(takashi murakami was here too he’s presence blown my mind sorry)
is it possible to hope a collab between you and kaws in the futur? and i would like to know if it’s possible to order a kitchen and a bathroom from pharrell ???????lol
Detailed and good work. Looks like a scene from a film on war.
I can dig it.
If you dig art come check out my art blog and Leave your views on any image. I want to see what you see.
http://chrismccardell.wordpress.com/
http://chrismccardell.wordpress.com/
Is the chairs gonna be on exhibit in the Miami Beach Art Basel Show next year??
That’s chairs awesome, can you post a pic of the one with the legs of a lion?
hey Loic I went there the day before the opening, and I saw the designs from P, brillant work with the love scene vocal background. And Takashi was present also that day to take care of the final touches of Mr. artwork. But when are you guys coming here? Mick told me you were going to come in October.
looks pretty hot
first!
Pharrell’s chair is an incredible, clever and completely unique idea. The little description is so informative also as now I get why Pharrell chose vivid, “sensual” colours and smooth, touchable material. I’m possibly going to Paris before Christmas so I might get to see it.
The other two descriptions were interesting too but it’s almost 11pm and I have college tomorrow morning so I’ll leave it at this: love the chair Pharrell!
http://www.lilmissurban.co.uk
Sarah xx
Pretty rad.
Too bad most of us won’t be in Paris to check it out!
Are there diffrent models of these chairs Pharrell designed? I thought the back legs were the feet of a man and the front legs were those of a woman.
I didn’t know some chairs had lion feet and legs… 0_| I wanna see them!
Wow, I would love to go to paris one day and view this exhibit. P keep up the great work & I can’t wait to hear what you got up for Pat piff.
K.Tate
1/2 Producer of Big sean’s “We Known”
http://www.myspace.com/newlevelpros
Also could you post the 2nd half of the session with you and sean in the studio. That was very inspiring. Hope to work with you in the near future, peace & god bless!
Picture is amazing…
Good stuff….
Shout out to P…
~Flash
http://www.myspace.com/flashhiphopmusic
Congratulations, baby:)
That chair is awesome!
Check out my clothing line and website launching mid november. Inspired partly by bbc/icecream
http://www.shopscubasteve.com
i have learned when ur inspired that is the way ur “in”line with your “spirit” thus we become “in spired”….and its an amazing feeling. i can deff share the feeling these artist feel while producing great work. its da same feeling Mozart felt nothin different.
that’s what I’m takin’ about! I love fine art and the fact that they’re incorporating manga style is just awesome. my kinda stuff. Go Pharrell, I would love to visit the gallery and see your exhibit first hand. star trak
i wish i can go!
hey pharrell
I am a big fan of your music, design, clothes etc, but i have to say i was really disappointed to read that your chairs use veal skin.
there are so many issues facing animal welfare and rights, but from what i know, veal seems to be one of the most blatantly cruel, inhumane and disgraceful abuses of animals by humans. there is inherent cruelty in the industry as calves are taken from their mothers, confined, denied basic nutrition and forced to suffer from birth to death, until they end up on our plate, or on your chairs so it seems!
so please fill me in on how you came to choose veal skin, whether you are aware of how it is produced, what standards your suppliers have and whether you follow exactly where the materials that make your products come from.
I am a fan and i respect your work and admire your diversity, but i hope that we dont have to part ways now!
please just send me some info, i am really interested to know whether you actively made that choice or whether it happened somewhere else along the line.
thanks
what pants he got on?
Congrats Pharrell!!!
music, clothing, now art sculptures…
your talents never end
-caro
if only i was in paris!!!!! lovin it……
anyways ……..also lovin the Lolita figures Mr!!!!! keep representing Lolitas!!!!!!
WATCH ME SHOW “N.E.R.D” HOW CALI GOES DUMB !
“DR.B” with N.E.R.D vid links below. STAR TRAK get back at ME !!!
Shout out to : PHARRELL,SHAE,MICK,FAMLAY,L.
http://WWW.MYSPACE.COM/DRB3000
http://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/DRBVIDZ
http://WWW.MYSPACE.COM/RICHKIDACADEMY
http://WWW.MYSPACE.COM/RICHKIDACADEMYMUSIC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELK8TVMx_M4
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=43309389