Marc Camille Chaimowicz: An Autumn Lexicon
This autumn, the Serpentine presents an exhibition by artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz. Increasingly influential for younger generations of artists, his work explores the space between public and private, design and art, and includes painting, sculpture and photography with prototypes for everyday objects, furnishings and wallpapers.
The exhibition “An Autumn Lexicon” will span Chaimowicz’s career offering a précis of his artistic vocabulary. It will draw upon ideas of memory and place in a newly conceived installation that responds to the architecture, natural surroundings and history of the Serpentine which was converted from a 1930s park café to a gallery in 1970. Chaimowicz will re-stage the pioneering early work Enough Tirannyfirst presented at the Serpentine Gallery in 1972. Described by the artist as a ‘scatter environment’, it combines art historical references with glam rock popular culture in an immersive installation filtered by coloured lights and a soundtrack.
Since these early installations and performances, Chaimowicz has continued to develop a broad visual language embracing materials and forms from both fine and applied art. For Chaimowicz, domestic objects and interiors are heavily invested with cultural, literary and biographical references, and configurations of his works take on the form of an expanded and ever-shifting still life. The exhibition will combine wallpapers, screens and curtains with paintings, collages and a new site-specific wall mural. It will also include the large-scale commission For MvdR (2008) comprising nine painted marble panels, a work that acknowledges Chaimowicz’s early training in painting.
The choreography of objects, images and colours in the exhibition will unfold as a mediation on remembrance, déjà-vu and time. An Autumn Lexicon will also host work by guest artists whom Chaimowicz has invited and selected to be part of the exhibition. The accompanying catalogue, designed by Fraser Muggeridge studio, will feature new texts by Michael Bracewell and Mason Leaver-Yap with an essay by Stuart Morgan first published in 1983.
