TANGO CHALLENGE at Deborah Bowmann

Artists: Michele Rizzo, Laurent-David Garnier, Andrea Crews, Deborah Bowmann

Exhibition title: TANGO CHALLENGE

Venue: Deborah Bowmann, Brussels, Belgium

Date: January 14 – March 10, 2016

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Deborah Bowmann, Brussels

Sylvie’s gone, Sylvie isn’t here, Sylvie will come back
Sylvie’s no choice, Sylvie desires,
Sylvie’s back, Sylvie’s connected
Sylvie’s on a trip, Sylvie on a busy day

Sylvie’s fed up, Sylvie’s dressed up, here is Sylvie,
Sylvie wears make up, Sylvie doesn’t want,
Sylvie’s decided, Sylvie’s irritated,
Sylvie in a cave, Sylvie the warrior

Deborah Bowmann Brussels, its representatives and Deborah Bowmann herself are pleased to present ‘TANGO CHALLENGE’, a Deborah Bowmann collaboration with artists Laurent-David Gar- nier and Michelle Rizzo, in partnership with Andrea Crews.

’TANGO CHALLENGE’ brings together a fragrance, a series of stands and a video. These elements maintain a certain form of independence regarding their connections to one another, developing a both tangible and suggested, invisible and physical system of relationship. ‘BÛCHE’, Olfactory Object realized by French artist Laurent-David Garnier contrasts and infiltrates the exhibition in its entirety. ‘some dancing around’, video realized by Italian artist Michele Rizzo shows a dance exe- cuted in the exhibition space, consisting of a distant interaction with Deborah Bowmann’s ‘Proposal for Andrea Crews’, like a sensitive, bodily translation of these forms.

‘TANGO CHALLENGE’ is a moment of collective transitions. It gathers elements that will, in a near future, be moved from the exhibition space to a mercantile one. Deborah Bowmann’s stands are the response to a commission from the brand Andrea Crews. While the exhibition will continue, the stands will leave the gallery to reach the Parisian store, leaving behind them a suggested and virtual presence. The other works of the exhibition are to follow the same pattern. From the 28th of February 2016 ‘BÛCHE’ will be on sale at ‘Andrea Crews’ in an edition of seven flasks while ‘some dancing around’ will be displayed in the style of an abstract advertisement. Like so, each element of the show exists in the form of an incomplete division, in which its apparition is contextually increased or subtracted. In this movement of de-contextualisation and re-contextualisation each piece’s status is to be put back into play, endangering the artwork’s capacities of resistance and questioning the very idea of such a resistance.

’TANGO CHALLENGE’ does not understand these transitive moments in their privative aspects but on the contrary as forms of augmentation, activation and enjoyment. It celebrates the non practical and non economic usages that are inherent to these objects. Like in a grasp, the different works are frozen in unfinished, fragmentary states.

Starting from and developing around a request for a set design, ‘TANGO CHALLENGE’ produces an exchange between an economic agent – external to the art market – and an exhibition. In the style of a tango, decision making comes from both dancing parties, navigating a system of ques- tions and answers, challenging the unidirectional interpretation of the artworks and encouraging a re-evaluation of the very nature of what is presented to us.