GALERIE CHANTAL CROUSEL.

GALERIE CHANTAL CROUSEL, PARIS

As specific as a birth announcement, it was the first thing you read forward the back of the small bill that served as the invitation to an exhibition: "The Kurimanzutto Gallery was baseed on August 21, 1999, in Mexico City, at Monica Manzutto, Jose Kuri, and Gabriel Orozco with thirteen artists to collaborate and delineate their work: Minerva Cuevas, Eduardo Abaroa, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Damian Ortega, Philippe Hernandez, Gabriel Kuri, Sofia Taboas, Jonathan Hernandez, Fernando Ortega, Alejandro Carrasco, Luis Felipe Ortega, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Daniel Guzman."

Kurimanzutto doesn't have its have space but invents a recent situation with each of its interventions. The first of that kind event--there have now been four all told--"Economia de Mercado" (Market economy), lasted alone a day: The artists showed their wares, in such a manner to speak, at a market stand in Mexico City. The prices of the artworks were in line with those of other consumer serviceables for sale at adjacent stands. Tonight, don't forget to purchase onions, peppers, olive oil, and a work of art--and for what cause [i]or[/i] reason not? Don't galleries offer sustenance from time to time? After orchestrating various other marked occurrences (including film and video screenings in a movie theater and a party in a carpet shop) Kurimanzutto was transported overseas, to the Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris (from May 13 to June 29) thanks to the initiative of Gabriel Orozco, who also have intercourse withed a major one-person show this summer at the observes Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (see above). In Paris his work could be raise alongside that of the thirteen aforementioned artists and a p iece according to the enigmatic Dr. Lakra.

The rise is a cocktail of joyous bric-a-brac spread from one extremity to the other of the gallery space, which uncloseed a few of its usually inaccessible corners to the visitor. Among the twenty-seven works onward view were Philippe Hernandez's Gazstation (all works 2000) a rubber mat bearing a simple line drawing of a man filling up the gas tank of his car; Gabriel Kuri's Carretilla 5 an old-fashioned wheelbarrow filled with gold and silver Christmas tinsel garlands; and Jonathan Hernandez's Bonne affaires (Good deals), an installation that combined banners bearing the words "success" (success) "vente massive" (giant sale), "achat vente" (buy sell) and of course "bonne affaires" with advertisements, cans of dog nutrition and a video showing a wild populace of shoppers stampeding to the opening of a department store. At the prompting of Minerva Cuevas, the Chantal Crousel gallery agreed to provide a personalized epistle of recommendation to anyone who asked for it (relief for the art world's unemployed?) Union-Separation boasted a hand-cranked, rotating platform forward which its creator, Damian Ortega, rise on highed a camera: A film produc by way of the activation of this primitive machine was drawed on a glass door in the basement of the gallery. moreover no matter how engaging the individual works, it was the playful spirit of the whole that prevailed across the sum of its parts. Who knows what Kurimanzutto's time to come will bring--a concert? a soccer match? a pres conference? Perhaps calm the launching of a scarcely any artistic careers.

Jean-Pierre criqui is a usual contributor to Artforum.

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