New York – Thirty Seven East

REVELATIONS

August 22, 2022September 24, 2022by JC AgidLeave a comment

Revelations (in French: here)
New York Exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Jean-Pierre Formica

The face’s wrinkles of painter and sculptor Jean-Pierre Formica, his eyes too, the iconic choice of words and his unexpected way of linking them together let a colorful and poetic universe surface. A desire to make the invisible visible. If his artworks were argentic photographs, Jean-Pierre Formica would be the developer, the essential chemical agent that converts the latent image into one that the eye can see.

Also inscribed on Formica’s face is the force of Camargue’s salty sun, the insatiable curiosity of a man driven by uncertainty, an almost detached look, perhaps surprised by the interest his work arouses, and a polite recognition.

A selection of Jean-Pierre Formica’s artworks will, at last, be on view in New York from September 6 to 30, 2022. Titled ‘Revelations,’ this exhibition juxtaposes recent paintings and sculptures whose teared papers for the former and accumulations for the latter give “form to the formless.”

They “reveal” to paraphrase the artist.

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Révélations

August 16, 2022September 24, 2022by JC Agid1 Comment

Révélations, Entretien avec l’artiste Jean-Pierre Formica

Les plissures du visage du peintre et sculpteur Jean-Pierre Formica, ses yeux aussi, le choix méticuleux des mots et sa façon inattendue de les lier ensemble laissent apparaître à la surface un univers coloré et poétique, une volonté de rendre visible l’invisible. Si cette œuvre était une photographie argentique, Jean-Pierre Formica en serait le révélateur, l’agent essentiel qui permet à l’image d’apparaître et se figer sur le papier.

Il y a aussi inscrit sur le visage de Formica la force du soleil salé de la Camargue, la curiosité insatiable d’un homme mû par l’incertitude, un regard presque détaché, surpris peut-être de l’intérêt que son œuvre suscite, sa reconnaissance polie.

Une sélection des œuvres de Jean-Pierre Formica sera visible à New York du 6 au 30 septembre 2022. Cette exposition, « Révélations », juxtapose des peintures et sculptures récentes dont les déchirures pour les premières et les accumulations pour les secondes donnent « forme à l’informe ». Elles « révèlent » pour reprendre l’expression de l’artiste.

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Are You Game?

January 1, 2022March 7, 2022by JC AgidLeave a comment

ARE YOU GAME?

French Version of this post, click here.
Special thanks to Delphine Schrank for editing this story

They didn’t just want to give to their favorite foundations. Some New Yorkers wanted to have some fun while doing it, playfully bidding for things both secret or less than significant. In the end, the cost matters less than the price of elegance.

What about you? Would you take the gamble and surprise a gathering of bow tied, long-dressed revelers, the accoutrement of traditional New York galas whose ‘in-person’ season just wound down with the closing year? How much would you be willing to pay to blindly acquire the contents of an evening clutch or a surprise bag – to promote Franco-American friendship?

It all started with a challenge, “un pari” in French. Un jeu, a game.

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Lola’s Race

November 13, 2021November 14, 2021by JC AgidLeave a comment

LOLA’S RACE

As the sun rises over the Verrazano bridge, Mirjam Lavabre, a woman entrepreneur and single mother of one, is warming her muscles up at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. Grey sport pants and a blue tee on, she is wearing runner’s bib 25341.

Mirjam leads a group of French friends, all about to pass the starting line of New York Marathon and engage on the 26.2-mile iconic race.

They are not just running to challenge their physical capacities; they are also raising money for First Candle foundation in memory of Mirjam’s daughter, who 15 years ago passed away of the sudden infant death syndrome. Her name was Lola, and it is written on capital letters on Mirjam’s arms, visible to the thousands of runners and supporters as she races through the five boroughs of Manhattan.

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Art: Never Forget

September 19, 2021September 22, 2021by JC AgidLeave a comment

Art: Never Forget
English edited by Delphine Schrank

Who could have imagined in March 2001 that when the Taliban gleefully blew up the three giant Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, their appalling act of cultural vandalism was just a prelude to the assassination less than six months later of Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the country’s iconic resistance leader, and just two days after that, to the attacks of September 11? Silent vigils to the endless vicissitudes of human history, these storied sculptures had survived countless previous attempts to ransack or raid them since their creation sometime between the 4th and the 8th century.

More recently, Islamic State terrorists, or ISIS, made a central mission of destroying the archaeological sites across Syria and Iraq—art, the collateral victim of anger and stupidity.

Archaeologists had previously dismembered many of these relics and transported them to major Western museums—art, the collateral victim, or assumed booty, of powerful nations, human vanity, and plunderers too.

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