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Bodys Isek Kingelez

  • Exhibition, Paris
  • Wed 21 Jun → Sat 09 Sep 1995
Machine d'architecture Bodys Isek Kingelez Projet pour le Kinshasa du troisième millénaire 1997 2
Bodys Isek Kingelez, Projet pour le Kinshasa du troisième millénaire, 1997 © Bodys Isek Kingelez Photo © Clérin-Morin

Location

Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain

261 boulevard Raspail

75014 Paris

The exhibit features ten of the artist’s “extreme models.” Among the works shown is his first large-scale imaginary city, Kimbembele Ihunga, as well as a model specially created in homage to Jean Nouvel, the architect of the Fondation Cartier building in Paris. Bodys Isek Kingelez’ sculptures of imaginary architecture offer a dialogue with Jean Tinguely’s improbable machine, on show at the same time.

Since the early 80s, Kingelez has been building his “extreme architectures” out of cardboard, paper, plastic, and other found materials. Kingelez seems to think in styles that are classical, gothic, Egyptian, Arab, renaissance, modern, and postmodern all at once. Literally atypical, his work has no direct relation to the cultural values of his country, his era, or his context. Kingelez sees his “extreme models” as an art that exercises power over the individual and the society for which his work is intended.

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