Introduction

The exhibition in China & Korea
by Seungduk Kim & Franck Gautherot

The first step ever made in Asia, is like any first time: an acceleration of the beat, of the rythm, of the speed, of blood pressure. It makes you feel a bit out of control, a bit distorted, a way outside. You think twice. What's up there? What's going on here? You feel a bit trapped, a bit caught in another nest, sticked in a weird spider web. You're scared of the city ready to digest you. And then, the times of peace arrived quite quickly and you didn't feel any burden anymore, just freed from suspicion, ready to participate fully with your entire body. Asia is not simple, is not a simple land of uniformity. It is an endless story started at the door of Istanbul, on the east side of the Bosphorus. It is already a different sound of melodies caught at the radio playing down there. A sort of looped tune with accents of mercy and grace. It is also the starting point for the « chaï », the tea called with the same sound from here until the end of the East ending up in Japan. Tea ceremony. We've been in Asia for the last ten years, for works, for fun, for friends and disappointements. For escaping and comfort. We dare to bring some of the best characters of the today art scene in a confused mix. Under the shadow of a gathering, a convention of shared knowledges, we set up a group of artworks. « Many colored objects placed side by side to form a row of many colored objects » as Lawrence Weiner wrote on the top front of the Fredericianum for documenta 7 in 1982 : an alliance of colleagues, a band of brothers and sisters, a group of professionals. A list of artists to invite in Beijing and in Seoul. For what? A group show is some kind of pretext to bring together people who vaguely know each other and who used to meet in some obscure spots on the planet at the request of curators who decide to make them travel there. And for not any other reasons. The pleasure to decide to put him and her on the same plane to China. The Alliance is a temporary gathering under minimum common rules of a certain number of individuals who decide to be together for a certain task to complete or to secure common interests. But here's The Alliance is a question of forms, shared ideas on how to organize forms in a plane or in a space. In politics the alliance as a name for parties has been used either by the rightwing as well as by the leftwing. It works in both ways. It is a neutral noun.

For us and for these two exhibitions that will circulate from Beijing to Seoul, The Alliance was a fact. A feeling of eccentricity, of an unbalanced sensation of fragility and force based on solid grounds. The figure and the story. An idea of time passing. Even non linear stories flow, and last for short or for long. The figure because a face could look at you and talk to you. « Are you talking to me? »
Persona. Telling something; a kind of fantasy spread over a canvas. An idea for a world modelled in clay or cut in wood. The souvenir of Courbet or Riemenschneider. The followers of Abstract Surrealists, the cousins of some shamanic bureaucrates. The history of science-fiction built out of  the best of the Constructivists. I still hear Steven Parrino cursing David Diao as a fucking Cubist. The main point was a certain degree of fantasy, of fairy tales, of very males, of merry Belles, of sorry nails...

This is the story of a feeling. Such a feeling for « bright » instead of « gloomy », an idea of colorful and sophisticated composition. When the plans and cut-out shapes are interwoven, when characters depicted on a painted background are storytellers. When birds can leave their colors on a glossy wall they are standing close to. The names are famous and unknown. It is The Alliance. An exhibition is a way to introduce images among a new community of forms and let them play their role under their own responsability. An exhibition is a matter of manipulation: temporary and soft enought to be forgotten the minute after. May be the best exhibition is the one made out of the best artfairs, according to the logic of a pure commercial and market oriented selection. Expensive works displayed together make the best. « Many expensive objects placed side by side to form a row of many expensive objects. »

The Alliance because many artworks are friends basically. And friends are well together in the same room, on adjacent walls. The politics of friendship. A new way to set up relationships. Friendship based on astrological signs: a libra will go well with a capricorn and so on. The rat is well with a dragon and a monkey. Dog and horse, tiger as well. They are all good together. Ox and snake and rooster. Rabbit goes best with pig and goat... But does a blurred abstraction feel well beside a figurative sculpture? Too vague to know. When preparing a show you imagine where to put the things. Arranged marriage. But visual and written description won't make it that well. So please we'll have to wait until it is hang on the walls or distributed in the spaces.  But on the paper, right away, we paired people and artworks.