Filmmaker, video artist, performance artist, sculptor, and illustrator, Joan Jonas is one of the most important female artists to emerge from the United States. Her work is currently shown in some of the world’s most prestigious museums, including MOMA (NY) and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam).Initially reknown for her sculptures, Joan Jonas began to branch out towards the world of performance in the late 1960’s through experience garnered with a number of experimental dance and theatre workshops (e.g. the Judson Dance Theater).Her performance pieces – taking place both inside and out; in galleries, theatres, or lofts – began early on to utilise cinematic techniques, and then video, as a means to distort the surrounding space, throwing off the public’s expectations of the typical live show. A true pioneer in her field, she mixes together sounds, movement, and images to create multiform objects, and often likens her methods to those of an “electronic witch”.For more than 30 years, the work of Joan Jonas has astonished viewers through its formal and conceptual modernity, or even, might one say, through its avant-gardism. For this project, Le Plateau / Frac Ile-de-France is pleased to be associated with the Jeu de paume – site Sully, hôtel de Sully and the studio@Yvon Lambert to offer the public the most complete introduction possible to this artist’s multifacted work.For the exhibition at le Plateau, we asked Joan Jonas to be both artist and curator by exploring the evolution of her own work and that of a younger generation of artists (Narda Fabiola Alvarado, Sung Hwan Kim, David Maljkovic and Seth Price) encountered in art schools throughout the United States and Europe. She envisions this exhibition as a moment to ask several pertinent questions about artistic heritage and transmission : Where is video headed nowadays ? What is performance’s place in the art world ? What about the political commitment of today’s 25 to 30 year old artists ? Is it still possible to pose the question of woman’s role in society?By shifting back and forth between the works of Joan Jonas and those of the other artists presented, the visitor has the chance to discover certain emblematic pieces by this great American artist (Mirage, 1976-2000 ; the series My new theatre 1997-1999) as well as works by foreign artists which for the most part have never before been shown in France. From June 8 to August 28, Le Jeu de paume – Site Sully will be presenting, as a second part to this exhibition, a selection of works tracing the career of the artist from the 1960’s to today (Wind, 1968 ; Organic Honey’s Visual telepathy, Organic Honey’s Vertical Roll, 1972 – 1994). From May 28 to July 30, the gallery studio -Yvon Lambert will present a series of recent works.
