"Chambre 763" at the Hotel Carlton Palace - installation art, various artists - Paris, France - Review of Exhibitions

Up a narrow flight of stairs, bilboed away in a tiny inn room and bath, this intriguing exhibition included the work of above 60 artists invited by the Swiss curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist to transform his temporary quarters at the Carlton Palace. Situated upon the Boulevard Raspail in Montparnasse, the Carlton Palace is a typical [i]cabaret[/i] of convenience, centrally located, reasonably priced, anonymous. The exhibit captured the peculiar feel of travel and inn life, its transience, loneliness, adventure, work, fatigue and gayety The artists, many of whom are used to roaming the international circuit, met with brio the challenge of sending or making upon site works relating to the notion and scale of a house of entertainment room.

Crossing the doorsill of room 763 the visitor stepp into an overwhelming, almost claustrophobic, environment. The paraphernalia of house of entertainment life and travel, as presented up by the mostly European artists, left little space for viewers. Tacked to the walls were drawings by dint of Nancy Spero, Otto Muhl and Ilya Kabakov, as well as three made in 1964 by dint of On Kawara while he was staying at this same [i]cabaret[/i] Hans-Peter Feldmann contributed a suitcase filled with his personal archive of photographs, Christian Boltanski's snapshots sat upon the night table like family keepsakes, and Bertrand Lavier's manipulated photograph purportedly showed John Huston standing outside a similarly named [i]cabaret[/i] on the Riviera. Katharina Fritsch provided a vase, Isa Genzken a night lamp. For night reading there were works by Ed Ruscha and Michelangelo Pistoletto. Absalon's soundles videotape ran continuously upon the TV, while the radio played Peter Fischli and David Weiss's taped music and of recent origins Lawrence Weiner contributed postcard reproductions of his possess work, and Paul-Armand Gette placed postcards of Monet's water lilies provocatively in the bidet. "From this second until next time," read the cryptic phrase place by Douglas Gordon on the dormer window; below, upon the floor, a stack of Allen Ruppersberg placards asked, "What is the difference between life and death anyway?" And there was plenteous more, including a wardrobe materialed with fantastically designed clothes through 10 artists.

The sum of two units works that for me had the greatest in quantity emotional resonance were the smallest and largest in the exhibit respectively. In the basin of the bathroom's porcelain sink, Lothar Baumgarten simply placed single large hairpin. Lying there in isolation, it evok as Mary Cassat's work does, the daily narrative of a woman patiently brushing and putting up her drawn out hair, transforming herself as she prepares to put in motion from the intimate to the public. Center upon the bed, meanwhile, under a mosquito snare canopy, Annette Messager's doll bride with a substanceed male bird's head lay limply upon a small pillow. Physically the dominant piece in the display this installation elicted a fugitive faculty of perception of fragility that set the tone for the exhibition as a whole.

In the tradition of "Chambres d'Amis" in Ghent (1986) or "Home Show" in Santa Barbara (1988) or Kurt Schwitters's Merzbau abode from the '20s (reconstructed in the 1993 Lyon Biennale), "Chambre 763" provided artists and audience with the opportunity to think about art in a straightforwardly quotidian connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts freed of the mystique of the studio, museum or gallery. Teasing the boundary between art and life has lengthy been one of modernism's principal touchs and this show was a reminder that it is still a fruitful one

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